Title: So Well Remembered
Author: James Hilton
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So Well Remembered

by

James Hilton

First published by Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1945

TABLE OF CONTENTS

That day so well remembered—a day, indeed, impossible
to forget —was the First of September, 1921; on the morning of which
George Boswell—then only Councillor Boswell, then sandy-brown-haired
with not a trace of grey—woke before dawn, looked at his watch, and
promptly slept again till Annie brought in the morning paper, a cup of tea,
and some letters that had just arrived. Amongst them was a note from Lord
Winslow's secretary, saying that his lordship would arrive at Browdley
Station by the noon train, in good time for the foundation-stone-laying; and
this made George very happy and proud, because Lord Winslow was not an
ordinary kind of lord (a type which George, never having met any, imagined
for himself and then proceeded to scorn on principle), but a special kind who
had not only devoted a lifetime to public service but had also written
several distinguished books.

At half-past seven George got up, put out his blue serge suit (the one
reserved for big events), and shaved with especial care, scanning meanwhile
the cheerful headlines of the paper propped against the mirror, and noting
with approval, whenever he looked beyond it, the misty promise of a fine
summer day. By eight he was at the breakfast-table, eating ham and eggs and
exchanging good- humoured chatter with Annie, the elderly 'help' who looked
after the house and did her best to overfeed him during his wife's absence;
by nine he was at his desk, composing an article for the Browdley and
District Guardian, which he owned and edited. He did not write easily as a
rule, but this time the phrases came on a wave of exhilaration, for though he
had a few private doubts that the Treaty of Versailles was all it should be,
he was prepared to give the future the benefit of them, the more so as it was
natural for him to give the future the benefit of anything. Anyhow by ten
George had composed a suitably optimistic editorial; noon saw him at the
railway station to welcome Lord Winslow; by one o'clock he had made a short
speech at the Town Hall luncheon; and by a quarter to two he was in his seat
on the improvised dais at the corner of Mill Street, blinking in the sunshine
and beaming his satisfaction to the four winds, one of which, then prevalent,
wafted back the concentrated smell of Browdley's industries. But George did
not mind that—indeed, it was the remembered perfume of his childhood,
of days spent on the banks of the canal that threaded its way between factory
walls, taking waste water hot from each one, so that a fog of steam drifted
over the surface and spread a low- hanging reek of oil, chemicals, and
machinery. Waiting on the platform for the ceremony to begin, George sniffed
and was happy.

A great day for Councillor Boswell and for Browdley, and also (one
gathered) for England and for the world. History, George reflected, could not
have done a better job of dramatization—August Thirty-First, the
Official End of the Great War (some sort of lawyers' technicality, but it
still made good news)—September First, the Foundation-Stone-Laying of
Unit One of the Mill Street Housing Scheme that was to replace some of
Browdley's worst slums. A great day, indeed. George, as his glance roved
around, was proud to have the dedicator (a Bishop) on his left, the guest of
the occasion (Lord Winslow) on his right, and various local bigwigs beyond
and behind; but he was proudest of all to see the crowd, and only wished it
as large as it would have been if Browdley folk weren't such notorious
slackers about civic affairs. He said so later, when he got up to speak, and
was applauded for his downrightness. George, in fact, was invariably
downright; it was natural for him, and a quality which, sometimes
disconcerting but always good-humoured, did as well in Browdley as the smooth
tongue of the diplomat, and perhaps better. There was a legend that when he
had wanted a rich local manufacturer to donate a mansion for use as a
municipal museum, he had said: "See here, Bob, I'm not ASKING this— I'm
DEMANDING it. You and your folks have exploited this town for the best part
of a century—if there was any justice you'd have been hanged long ago.
But as there isn't—let's have that house." And he had got it.

Furthermore, George thought, it was a shame that only a few hundreds,
instead of thousands, had turned out to welcome a man like Lord Winslow
—or was it possible they didn't know how distinguished Lord Winslow
really was? But George's personal enjoyment of the proceedings was not to be
lessened—not even when the town brass band began to play Sousa rather
badly in the shadow of a large Union Jack hung upside-down—a detail
that remained unnoticed save by a solitary busybody who afterwards wrote a
letter about it which the Guardian did not print. Altogether the scene was
typical of many a quietly happy English occasion during those distant years
when Englishmen could be quietly happy.

George's face was also typically English (which means, perhaps, nothing
more than that he might have passed, in their respective countries, for a
Dane, a Norwegian, a Swede, a German, or a Norman Frenchman, but not so
easily for an Italian, a Greek, or a Spaniard); at any rate, he was blue-eyed
and ruddy-cheeked, the mouth expanding into smiles of shy benevolence as
greetings came from the crowd, the chin steady and square, with none of the
false dynamism of the acute angle. George, at thirty-five, was a good-
looking man, if one cared to call him that, but he seemed to merit some
solider adjective than could be applied equally to youthful film-actors and
tennis-champions; there was a touch of earthiness in him that matched well
with his wide shoulders and strong hands and genial provincial burr. It was a
quiet, almost a humorous touch, behind which, in a sort of ambush, there
lurked ambitions and determinations that had already left their mark on
Browdley.

This housing development was one of them—a modest triumph (George
called it) of practical idealism over the ninety per cent of apathy and ten
per cent of pure selfishness that comprise idealism's biggest enemy. George
could justifiably smile as he stared about him that September afternoon, for
this was the first fruit of his Councillorship and the first post-war
improvement in Browdley to get beyond the talking stage. Only George knew the
struggle it had been through almost incredible thickets of vested interests
and Government red tape; but here it was at last, something actually begun
after all the argument, and his friends and fellow-citizens might well give
him a cheer. Even the Mayor, who was among his strongest political opponents,
could not restrain a reluctantly cordial smile.

George was telling the Bishop that he had been born in one of the slum
houses just demolished—Number Twenty-Four, Mill Street, to be precise
—and the Bishop was chaffing him about not having had it preserved as a
place of historical interest with a mural tablet to commemorate the great
event. George laughed and said he would have taken such an idea far more
seriously twenty-odd years ago, and then he confessed that as a small boy he
had once read how the desks at Harrow School were carved with the names of
famous men; and that in order not to disappoint posterity he had carved his
own name on the inside of the privy-door at the end of the backyard of Number
Twenty-Four—not a very romantic substitute for a desk at Harrow, but
the handiest available in his own limited world.

"Ah, dear me," exclaimed the Bishop, who was a Harrovian and a little
shocked at first, but then when he looked at George's face, so clearly that
of a man telling a simple story of something that had very simply happened,
he was won over, as people nearly always were by George; so he added with a
smile: "Ah, well—a harmless occupation, I daresay."

George went on without realizing the extent of his conquest: "Aye, it was
the only place I was ever left alone in those days, because we were a large
family, and a four-roomed house doesn't allow for much privacy. Fortunately
my father started work at six in the morning and didn't come home till six at
night—I hardly saw him except on Sundays when he marched us all off to
chapel."

"Ah, grand folks, those old Nonconformists," murmured the Bishop, turning
on the magnanimity.

"He was a local preacher too," George continued, pointing suddenly up Mill
Street. "There's the chapel, and there"—swinging his arm in the
opposite direction—"there's Channing's Mill, where he
worked—"

"CHANNING'S? Not—er—Channing and Felsby?"

"Aye, that's what it used to be. You knew of it?"

"I'm afraid so." The Bishop smiled ruefully. "I—er—I once had
a few shares in it."

"You were better off than my father, then, because he had a lifetime in
it. From the age of ten to the day he died—fifty years, and for half of
every year, except on Sundays, he only saw daylight through the mill
windows."

"Ah, terrible—terrible," murmured the Bishop.

George chuckled. "Maybe, but he didn't feel that way. I don't believe it
ever occurred to him. He was quite content all week looking forward to
Sunday."

"When he enjoyed his preaching, no doubt."

"You bet he did, and he was a dab hand at it too. I've heard him last a
couple of hours, without a note, and fluent all the time."

The Bishop sighed. "Ah, that's a wonderful thing—to possess the gift
of tongues, so that one never has to think for a word—"

"Maybe that's it," said George. "It's the thinking that spoils it." His
eyes twinkled and his voice, as nearly as a voice can, nudged the Bishop in
the ribs. "Once I remember my father started off a prayer with 'Oh God, if
there be a God'—but he said it in such a grand booming voice that
nobody noticed it any more than he had."

"Except you," interjected Lord Winslow, who had been overhearing the
conversation from the other side. George turned, a little startled at first,
and then, seeing a smile on his lordship's face, smiled back and replied
thoughtfully: "Aye, that's so. I suppose I was always a bit of a one for
noticing things."

By then the band had finished playing and it was time for George to open
the proceedings. He did so in a speech that lasted a few minutes only; one of
his virtues, innocently acquired because he regarded it as a drawback, was
that ceremonial oratory did not come easily to him. But he had a pleasant
voice and a knack of using simple words as a first-class workman uses tools;
his newspaper editorials were not so good, because he 'polished' them too
much. There was also a hint of the child in him that appeared now in his
unconcealed and quite unconcealable pleasure; he could not help letting
Browdley know how pleased he was, not only with the town for having elected
him one of its councillors, but doubtless also with himself for having so
well merited the honour. A certain inward modesty made tolerable, and even
attractive, an outward quality that might have been termed conceit. And when,
having briefly introduced Lord Winslow, he sat down amidst another gust of
applause, the life of the gathering seemed to centre on his still beaming
countenance rather than on the tall, thin, pallid stranger who rose to pay
him conventional compliments.

Winslow, of course, was a much better speaker by any erudite standards. To
the acceptable accent of English aristocracy and officialdom he added an air
of slightly bored accomplishment that often goes with it, and the chiefly
working-class audience gave him respectful attention throughout an address
that was considerably above their heads. Had he been of their own class they
might have shouted a few ribald interruptions, but they would not do this to
a stranger so clearly of rank; indeed their patient silence implied a
half-affectionate tolerance for 'one of the nobs' who eccentrically chose to
interest himself in Browdley affairs instead of in the far more glamorous
ones they imagined must be his own—the sort of tolerance that had
evoked an audible exclamation of "Poor little bugger!" from some unknown
citizen when, a few years back, a royal prince had passed through the town on
an official tour. To Browdley folk, as they looked and listened now, it
seemed that Lord Winslow was all the time thinking of something else (as
indeed he was), but they did not blame him for it; on the contrary, the
cheers when he finished were a friendly concession that he had doubtless done
his best and that it was pretty decent of him to have bothered to do anything
at all.

Then the Bishop prayed, the foundation stone was well and truly laid,
sundry votes of thanks were passed, the band played 'God Save the King', and
the ceremony petered out. But Councillor Boswell seemed loth to leave the
scene of so much concentrated personal victory. He gripped Winslow's arm with
proprietary zeal, talking about his plans for further slum-clearances while
from time to time he introduced various local people who hung around; and
finally, when most had disappeared to their homes and the Bishop had waved a
benign goodbye, George escorted his principal guest to the car that was to
take him back to Browdley Station. It was not only that he knew Winslow was
important and might at some future date do the town a service; nor merely
that he already liked him, for he found it easy to like people; the fact was,
Winslow was the type that stirred in George a note of genuine hero-worship
—and in spite, rather than because, of the title. After all, a man
couldn't help what he inherited, and if he were also a high Government
personage with a string of degrees and academic distinctions after his name,
why hold mere blue blood against him? It was the truer aristocracy of
intellect that George admired—hence the spell cast over him by
Winslow's scholarly speech, his dome-like forehead, and the absent- minded
professorial manner that George took to be preoccupation with some abstruse
problem. He had already looked him up in Who's Who, and during the drive in
the car through Browdley streets humility transformed itself into na ve
delight that an Oxford Doctor of Philosophy had actually accepted an
invitation to have tea at his house.

George was also delighted at the success of his own ruse to side- track
the Mayor and the other councillors and get Winslow on his own, and most
delighted of all, as well as astonished, when Winslow said: "Good idea,
Boswell—I had been on the point of suggesting such a thing myself. My
train is not for an hour or so, I understand."

"That's right, no need to hurry," George replied. "And there's later
trains for that matter."

Winslow smiled. "Well, we have time for a cup of tea, anyhow." And after a
pause, as if the personality of George really interested him: "So you come of
an old Browdley family?"

"As old as we have 'em here, sir, but that's not so old. My great-
great-grandfather was a farm labourer in Kent, and our branch of the family
moved north when the cotton-mills wanted cheap labour. I haven't got any
famous ancestors, except one who's supposed to have been transported to
Australia for poaching." He added regretfully: "But I could never get any
proof of it."

Winslow smiled. "At any rate, your father lived it down. He seems to have
been a much respected man in Browdley."

George nodded, pleased by the tribute, but then went on, with that
disconcerting frankness that was (if he had only known it, but then of course
if he had known it, it wouldn't have been) one of his principal charms: "Aye,
he was much respected, and for twenty years after he died I went about
thinking how much I'd respected him myself, but then one day when I was
afraid of something, it suddenly occurred to me it was the same feeling I'd
had for my father."

"You mean you DIDN'T respect him?"

"Oh, I did that as well, but where there's fear it doesn't much matter
what goes with it. There was a lot of fear in our house—there always is
when folks are poor. Either they're afraid of the landlord or the policeman
or employers or unemployment or having another mouth to feed or a son getting
wed and taking his wage with him—birth, marriage, and death—it's
all summat to worry about. Even AFTER death, in my father's case, because he
was what he called God-fearing."

Winslow smiled again. "So you didn't have a very happy childhood?"

"I suppose it wasn't, though at the time I took it as natural. There was
nothing cruel, mind you—only hardships and stern faces." George then
confessed that during the first six years of his life he was rarely if ever
told to do anything without being threatened with what would happen if he
didn't or couldn't; and the fact that these threats were mostly empty did not
prevent the main effect—which was to give him a first impression of the
world as a piece of adult property in which children were trespassers. "Only
they weren't prosecuted," he added, with a laugh. "They were mostly just
yelled at... D'you know, one of the biggest shocks of my life was after my
parents died and I was sent to live with an uncle I'd never met before
—to find out then that grown-ups could actually talk to me in a
cheerful, casual sort of way, even though I WAS only a boy!"

"Yes, there must have been a big difference."

"Aye, and I'll tell you what I've often thought the difference was,"
George went on, growing bolder and smiling his wide smile. "Just a matter of
a few quid a week. You see, my father never earned more than two-pound-ten at
the mill, but my uncle had a little business that brought in about twice
that. Not a fortune—but enough to keep away some of the fears."

"There's one fear, anyhow, that nobody had in those days," Winslow
commented. "Wars before 1914 were so far off and so far removed from his
personal life that the average Englishman had only to read about them in the
papers and cheer for his side."

"Not even that if he didn't want to," George replied. "Take my father and
the Boers, for instance. Thoroughly approved of them, he did, especially old
Kruger, whom he used to pray for as 'that great President and the victor of
Majuba Hill, which, as Thou knowest, Lord, is situated near the border of
Natal and the Transvaal Republic...' He always liked to make sure the Lord
had all the facts."

Despite Winslow's laugh, George checked his flow of reminiscence, for he
had begun to feel he had been led into talking too much about himself. Taking
advantage, therefore, of a curve in the street that afforded the view of a
large derelict weaving-shed, he launched into more appropriate chatter about
Browdley, its history, geography, trade conditions, and so on, and how, as
Councillor, he was seeking to alleviate local unemployment. Winslow began to
look preoccupied during all this, so George eventually stopped talking
altogether as he neared his house—smiling a little to himself, though.
He suspected that Winslow was already on guard against a possible
solicitation of favours. "Or else he thinks I'm running after him because
he's a lord," George thought, scornfully amused at such a plausible
error.

The factor George counted on to reveal the error was the room in which
they were both to have tea. It was not a very large room (in the small
mid-Victorian house adjoining the printing-office in Market Street), but its
four walls, even over the door and under the windows, were totally covered
with books. One of George's numerous prides was in having the finest personal
library in Browdley, and probably he had; it was a genuine collection,
anyhow, not an accumulation of sets for the sake of their binding, such as
could be seen in the mansions of rich local manufacturers. Moreover, George
really READ his books—thoroughly and studiously, often with pencil in
hand for note-taking. Like many men who have suffered deficiencies in early
education, he had more than made up for them since—except that he had
failed to acquire the really unique thing a good early education can bequeath
—the ability to grow up and forget about it. George could never forget
—neither on nor off the Education Committee of which he made the best
and most energetic chairman Browdley had ever had.

What he chiefly hoped was that during the interval before Winslow must
catch his train back to London, they might have a serious intellectual talk
—or perhaps the latter would talk, Gamaliel-wise, while George sat
metaphorically at his feet.

Unfortunately the great man failed to pick up the desired cue from a first
sight of the books; indeed, he seemed hardly to notice them, even when George
with an expansive wave of the hand bade him make himself at home; though
there was consolation in reflecting that Winslow's own library was probably
so huge that this one must appear commonplace.

"Make yourself thoroughly at home, sir," George repeated, with extra
heartiness on account of his disappointment.

"Thank you," answered the other, striding across the room. He stood for a
few seconds, staring through the back window, then murmured meditatively:
"H'm—very nice. Quite a show. Wonderful what one can do even in the
middle of a town."

George then realized that Winslow must be referring to the small oblong
garden between the house and the wall of the neighbouring bus-garage. So he
replied quickly: "Aye, but it's gone a bit to pieces lately. Not much in my
line, gardening."

"Must compliment you on your roses, anyhow."

"My wife, not me—she's the one for all that if she was here."

"She's away?"

"Aye—on the Continent. Likes to travel too—all over the place.
But books are more in my line."

"It's certainly been a good season for them."

George wasn't sure what this referred to until Winslow added, still
staring out of the window: "My wife's another enthusiast—she's won
prizes at our local show."

George still did not think this a promising beginning to an intellectual
conversation, but as Annie was just then bringing in the tea he said no more
about books. Winslow, however, could not tear himself away from the spectacle
of the roses—which were, indeed, especially beautiful that year. "Too
bad," he murmured, "for anyone who loves a garden to miss England just now...
So you're not keen on foreign holidays, is that it, Boswell?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say no if I had the chance, but I don't suppose I'd ever
be as keen as Livia is. Anyhow, I've got too much to do in Browdley to leave
the place for months on end."

"MONTHS? Quite a holiday."

"Aye, but it's not all holiday for her. She has a job with one of those
travel tours—'Ten Days in Lovely Lucerne'—that kind of thing.
Pays her expenses and a bit over."

"Convenient."

"For anyone who likes seeing the same sights with different folks over and
over again. I wouldn't."

"Sort of guide, is she?"

"I reckon so. She runs the show for 'em, I'll bet. She's got a real knack
for managing folks when she feels like it."

"I wouldn't say you were entirely without it yourself."

"Ah, but with her it's an art." George was too genuinely modest to realize
that his own sterling na veté was just as good a knack, art, or whatever else
it was. "Maybe you won't believe me, but when I was a young fellow I was so
scared of meeting folks I could hardly get a word out. And even now I'm not
as happy on a platform as I am sitting alone in this room with a good book."
He jerked his head towards the surrounding shelves in another attempt to
steer the conversation, and when Winslow did not immediately reply, he added
more pointedly: "I expect you're a great reader yourself?"

"Oh, fairly—when I can find the time."

"Aye, that's the worst of being in public life." At least they had THAT
bond in common. "You know, sir, there's only one reason I'd ever wish to be
young again—REALLY young, I mean," he added, as he saw Winslow smile,
—"and that's to have summat I missed years ago—a right-down good
education... I'll never forget when I visited Oxford and saw all those lucky
lads in the colleges..." A sincere emotion entered his voice. "And the
professors in their libraries—I tell you frankly, I..." He saw that
Winslow was still smiling. "Well, I'll put it this way—there's only one
thing I'd rather be than in politics, and that's one of those university
dons, as they call 'em."

"Yet I doubt if many of them are doing any better work than you are here
—judging by what I've seen today."

George was pleased again, but also slightly shocked by the comparison; he
could not believe that Winslow really meant it, and he was surprised that
such a distinguished man should stoop to mere flattery. "Oh, come now, sir,
I'll never swallow that. After all, think of the books they write— I've
got shelves of 'em here—heavy stuff, I admit, but grand training for
the mind."

"Yes, books are all right." Winslow gave a little sigh. "Though it's
remarkable how little help they offer in some of the more curious problems of
life." George was thinking this a rather strange remark when an even stranger
one followed it. "Look here, Boswell, I'm going to do something I wasn't sure
about before I met you—partly because I wasn't sure you were the right
man, and partly because even if you were, I couldn't be positive how you'd
take it."

George looked up with a puzzled expression. There flashed through his mind
the intoxicating possibility that Winslow might be going to ask his advice
about some matter of departmental policy—low- rent housing, say, or an
extension of the school leaving age.

But Winslow continued: "Quite a coincidence meeting you like this. Several
months ago when I promised to speak at your ceremony today I hadn't even
heard of you—but when quite recently I did, I decided it might be a
good chance to—to approach you—if—if you seemed the sort of
man who might be approachable. You see, it's a somewhat unusual and delicate
matter, and there aren't any rules of etiquette to proceed by."

And then there flashed through George's already puzzled mind another
though less welcome possibility—that Winslow was an emissary of the
Government deputed to find out in advance whether George would accept a title
in recognition of his 'public services' to the town of Browdley. It was
highly unlikely, of course, since he was a mere town councillor and did not
belong to the Government party, but still, anything could happen when parties
and politics were fluid and Lloyd George was reputed to cast a discerning eye
upon foes as well as friends. Anyhow, George's reply would be a straight
'no', because he very simply though a trifle truculently did not believe in
titles.

He saw that Winslow was waiting for a remark, so he called his thoughts to
order and said guardedly: "I'm afraid I don't quite catch on so far, but
whatever it is, if there's any way I can help—"

"Thanks, that's very kind of you. I hope there is. So if you'll just let
me go ahead and explain..."

George nodded, now more puzzled than ever; he could not help thinking that
Winslow was terribly slow in getting to the point, whatever it was. Meanwhile
the great man had opened up into an account of a semi-official tour he had
lately undertaken to inspect housing projects, mostly on paper, in some of
the Continental countries. At this George nodded with enthusiastic
comprehension, and to show that, even without foreign travel, he kept himself
well abreast of such matters, he reached for a book that happened to be to
hand. "You'll have seen it, I daresay," he interrupted eagerly. "I got the
architect of our local scheme to adopt several of this fellow's ideas—
I've always said we should all pool our post-war experience—Allies and
ex-enemies alike. Take Vienna, for instance, where the Socialists are very
strong—"

"Yes, yes indeed," Winslow agreed, though with a note in his voice to
check all chatter. However, he seemed willing enough to take Vienna, for he
continued: "That was one of the cities I visited recently. Apart from
business, I had a special reason because my son Jeff happens to be there too.
He has a job—er—connected with the Embassy." He paused and pulled
out a small pocket-book; in it he found a snapshot which he passed to George.
It showed a smiling young man in ski-costume in company with several pretty
girls against a background panorama of snow-covered mountains. "Taken at
Kitzbühl," he added.

George had not heard of Kitzbühl, but he knew a fine-looking fellow when
he saw one, and now quite sincerely expressed his admiration. To reciprocate
the intimacy he pointed to one of a number of photographs on top of a
revolving bookcase of encyclopædias. "Reminds me a bit of the lad just behind
you."

Winslow turned to look and confirmed after scrutiny: "Yes, quite a
resemblance. Your SON? I wouldn't have thought you were old
enough—"

"I'm not... That's one of my brothers—killed on the Somme on July
First, Nineteen-Sixteen. Fifty thousand killed with him the same day—
according to the records. Something for folks to remember when they attack
disarmament."

"And THIS?" said Winslow, still seemingly preoccupied with the
photographs.

"That's my wife."

"Ah, yes."

George then felt it was time to relieve his guest of any further
obligation to appear interested in his family, so he returned the snapshot
with the comment: "Aye, he's a bonny lad—and brainy too, by the look of
him."

"They seemed to think so at Oxford."

"He did well there?"

"Pretty well."

"What did he get?"

"GET? Oh, a Rowing Blue, and he was also President of the
Union—"

"And a good degree? A First, I suppose?"

"Er... yes, I think so."

"DOUBLE First?"

Winslow smiled. "I believe he took several Firsts in various subjects, but
they don't seem to use the term 'Double First' any more."

"Gladstone got it."

"Did he? You seem to know a good deal about these matters, Boswell..."

"Aye, as an outsider. Though it was my father who told me about Gladstone.
I think he was the only man except Bible characters whom my father really
admired... But go on about your boy."

"Well, as I said, Jeff did pretty well at Oxford till the war cut into his
career. Then he served in Egypt and got a D.S.O., and soon after the
Armistice he went to France and Germany for languages, because he was
entering the Diplomatic Service and the usual thing is to get attached for a
few years to one of the embassies or legations. He's only twenty-five."

"Sounds like a future in front of him."

"That—er—is what I have hoped. We've always got on excellently
together—good friends, I mean, as well as father and son. When I
arrived in Vienna recently the first thing he did was to take me off to some
restaurant where we could talk—because I hadn't seen him for six
months, and that's a long time for family gossip to accumulate." Winslow
began to smile again. "I thought from the outset he didn't seem exactly
himself—he was preoccupied, somehow, in the way he behaved and talked
—and later I asked if there'd been any trouble at the Embassy, but he
said no, nothing like that. At last I got out of him what HAD caused the
change." The smile became suddenly forced and wan. "Perfectly natural, you
may think."

"Been worrying about conditions in Austria? I understand things are pretty
bad, what with the famine and inflation—"

"No—not even all that... He'd fallen in love."

George chuckled. "Well, sir, that quite often happens to good- looking
chaps of twenty-five. The only surprising thing is that it hadn't happened
before."

"Oh, but it had. That's one of the—er—complications. He was
engaged to a very charming girl, a neighbour of ours in Berkshire, but he
said he'd already written to her to break it off—on account of the
—er—new attraction."

"I see." And at this George frowned slightly. A whiff of truculence was
generated in him as, momentarily, he saw in Winslow no longer an unworldly
scholar but a hidebound aristocrat conforming to type; for already the
probable outlines of the story seemed clear—a father anxious for his
son to make a socially correct marriage, the son's romance with some pretty
but penniless Austrian girl... and George, of course, was all on the side of
the son and the girl, though he would wait to say so till Winslow had
finished. All he commented now was a blunt: "Everyone has a right to change
his mind."

"Of course. It wasn't my place to interfere—provided the supplanter
was all right."

"Not even if you thought she wasn't. A chap of twenty-five must choose for
himself."

"Yes, in theory, though when—"

"In theory AND in practice, sir. I don't say a father can't give advice in
these matters, but that's about all he CAN give. And if a young fellow makes
a mistake, well, it's his mistake, and he can't blame anyone else. Haven't we
all made mistakes? And besides, even if she is a foreigner and recently an
enemy—"

"Oh, that wouldn't worry me, and anyhow, she isn't—she's
English."

"Then what does worry you?"

"Perhaps I'd better go on with what happened. Jeff naturally described her
to me in glowing colours and suggested an early meeting, so we all three
dined together the next day, and I must admit my first impression was
favourable—at any rate, she struck me as both charming and
intelligent..."

George was about to pour his guest another cup of tea, but Winslow made a
declining gesture. "Very kind of you, Boswell, but—but I really feel in
need of something a little stronger—I wonder—if you —if it
isn't too much trouble—if I could have a whisky and soda?"

At which George could only in his own turn look embarrassed. "To tell you
the truth I don't have such a thing in the house—you see, I'm teetotal.
But if you're not feeling well I could send Annie out for a drop of
brandy—"

"Oh, please, no, I'm perfectly well—just tiredness, that's all. I
really shouldn't have mentioned it. Of no consequence at all, I assure you."
What had really been demonstrated was a social distinction far more revealing
than any question of blood or accent—the fact that Winslow, though he
drank sparingly, nevertheless belonged to the class for whom whisky is as
much a household commonplace as salt or soap; whereas George, though by no
means a bigot, had inherited enough of his father's puritanism to think of
liquor in terms of drunkenness and social problems.

After the gulf had been bridged by renewed apologies on both sides,
Winslow continued: "To come to the point"—(AT LAST, thought George)
—"I told Jeff afterwards that if they'd both made up their minds there
was nothing much for me to say. I was just a bit worried, though, because I
gathered it had been a very sudden affair, and I didn't think he could really
know enough about her."

"You mean her family and so on?"

"Partly. You may think me a snob, but I had to ask myself whether, as a
diplomat's wife, she would have the right background."

"Aye, I suppose that's what counts." George's voice was severe.

"Yes—though not as much as it used to."

"I'm glad to hear it. I don't know much about the Diplomatic Service, but
I'm all for democracy in these things. And since you have to admit the girl
was all right herself—"

"Oh yes, she seemed so. I could imagine her a good hostess, and she
certainly had intelligence enough to pull wires."

"Do diplomats' wives have to do that?"

"They don't have to, but it can help. Don't the wives of your local
councillors sometimes do it?"

George grinned. "Not mine, anyhow. I could never get her to take an
interest in local affairs at all... But about your son and this girl... So I
suppose you consented to the match?"

"I should have done, but for finding out something about her that was
—as I think even you will agree—rather insuperable. Simply that
she was already married. The fact came out quite accidentally— someone
I happened to meet in Switzerland on my way home was able to tell me about
her. She had, it appeared—at least there was no other conclusion to be
drawn—deliberately misled Jeff. And a rather pointless deception
too—unless of course she was prepared to commit bigamy."

George pondered a moment. "Well, you found out in time, that's the main
thing."

"Perhaps not in time, though, to stop him from making an utter fool of
himself."

Winslow paused and seemed suddenly aware of the extent of George's
library, though his ranging glance was hardly one of interest in it. At the
same moment Annie entered with some letters and was about to hand them to
George, but the latter shook his head and gestured her to put them on his
desk. Winslow intervened: "Don't mind me if there's anything important you
ought to attend to."

"They can wait, whatever they are."

"It's good of you to let me take up your time like this."

George was amazed at the humility of such a remark from a man of Winslow's
age and importance. He could only reply: "Not at all, sir. Besides, you say I
can help—though I wouldn't pretend to be much good at advice about
—er—family matters and so on."

"Perhaps because your own family affairs have been happy?"

"Oh, I've had my troubles, same as most folks, I reckon."

"But you've settled them all?"

"I've never had any to settle about a grown-up lad." And George added,
wryly: "Worse luck."

"Perhaps that itself makes a sort of trouble? I mean if—if— of
course I don't know what your—"

"Aye... aye... but let's get back to YOUR lad. What's the mistake he made?
Surely when you told him—"

Winslow leaned forward with his hands pressed down on his knees; he seemed
to be seeking mastery of some strong emotion. "Forgive me for not keeping to
the point... Yes, I told him. We had long conversations, but only by
telephone, unfortunately, because I was compelled to return to England for an
important Government conference. That was a further complication—not
being in personal touch with him. It was very hard to telephone. Of course if
he'd been his normal self the mere facts would have been enough—he's
always been quick to do the right thing. But—you see—he's NOT his
normal self any more. This emotion—love or whatever you call it
—perhaps madness or infatuation's a better word—"

"Doesn't seem to matter much what you call it if it's there."

"I agree—provided one doesn't fall into the error of idealizing. I'd
say, for instance, that I love my own wife, but I can easily think of things
I wouldn't do to please her—things which, even if she asked me to do
them, would destroy the bond between us—like betraying my friends or my
country... But infatuation's different—it seems to glory in doing
things IN SPITE OF, rather than BECAUSE OF... if you know what I mean."

George made no comment.

"Well, anyhow, the point is, he hasn't dropped her, even though he knows
the truth and she's been forced to admit it. He's behaving, in fact, as if he
CAN'T drop her. The last time I talked to him, which was from Paris, I
gathered he'd not only forgiven her for the deception, but she's made him
believe a long story about an unhappy past and a husband she ran away from
because she couldn't stand him... and the upshot of it all is, Jeff's now
urging her to get a divorce so that he can marry her himself."

"What's HER attitude?"

"I only know through him—and of course he's so completely prejudiced
in her favour that it's not much to go by. But remember he's quite a catch,
even if it does ruin his career."

"And it would? Because of the scandal?"

"Possibly... But worst of all, as I see it, is the thing itself—to
put himself at the mercy of someone who has such evident power to distort and
overthrow his judgment... JUDGMENT... the most valuable attribute a man of
his profession can have... because if he still had any of it left, he'd drop
her. After all, how could he EXPECT a marriage of that sort to turn out a
success?... It's a sad thing, Boswell, to see a first-class intelligence
functioning like a baby's."

"Why don't you go out and talk to him personally as soon as you have the
time?"

"Yes, I shall do that—I wired him today about it. But somehow I'm
not sure that I can do much on my own—that last telephone talk was
simply shattering—the most I could get was a promise that he'd think it
over, but he CAN'T think, that's the trouble—he's in a world utterly
beyond logic and argument—you can't prove anything to him —he
just believes this woman's a sort of martyr-heroine and her husband's an
impossible brute and—"

"How do you know he isn't?"

Winslow got up suddenly, walked to the window, then came back and touched
George on the shoulder with a queerly intimate gesture. "I didn't know
—definitely—until today. But I'm a bit positive at this
moment..." And after a second pause, standing in front of George, he
stammered unsurely: "I hope I haven't been so damned tactful that you're
going to ask me what all this has got to do with you..."

* * * * *

Then George looked up and saw in a flash what it HAD got to
do with
him.

He felt himself growing cold and sick, as if a fist were grasping him by
his insides. Try as one might, he reflected with queer and instant
detachment, the actual blow of such a revelation must be sudden; there was no
way of leading up that could disperse the shock over a period; one second one
did not know, the next second one did know; that was all there was to it, so
that all Winslow's delicacy had been in a sense wasted. He might just as well
have blurted out the truth right at the beginning.

George knew he must say something to acknowledge that Oxford had managed
to convey with subtlety in an hour what Browdley could have tackled vulgarly
in five minutes. After a long pause, he therefore spoke the slow Browdley
affirmative that, by its tone, could imply resignation as well as
affirmation.

"You mean you DO understand, Boswell?"

"Aye," George repeated.

"I'm terribly sorry—I could think of no other way than to put it to
you—"

"Of course, man, of course."

Winslow gripped George's arm speechlessly, and for several minutes the two
seemed not to know what to say to each other. Presently George mumbled: "Is
that—all—you can tell me—about it? No more details of any
kind? Not that they'd help much, but still—"

"Honestly, Boswell, I've told you just about everything I know
myself."

"I understand... But how about the people on the tour whom she was
supposed to be looking after?"

"Maybe she just left them stranded... It would be crazy and irresponsible
—but no more so than—than—"

"Than anything else. That's so."

"I admit the whole thing sounds—must sound to you, in fact—
well, if you were to tell me you simply didn't believe a word of it,
I'd—"

"Aye, it's a bit of a facer."

"But you DO believe it?"

"Reckon I have to, don't I? After all, you took a good look at that
photograph..."

"Yes, it's the same. I knew that at once..." Winslow's voice grew almost
pathetically eager. "And you WILL help me, won't you—now that you know
how it is? What I had in mind was this—if you agreed— that we go
out there together—quite soon—immediately, in fact —before
there can be any open scandal involving him—you see what I mean?"

"Aye, I see what you mean."

"And you agree?"

To which George retorted with sudden sharpness: "Why not, for God's sake?
He may be your son, but she's my wife too. Don't you think I'M
interested?"

"Of course. I'm sorry. I'm afraid I—I—"

"Now, now, don't apologize. Come to that, we've neither of us much to
apologize for."

"I thought we might leave tomorrow—"

"Aye, if we're going, might as well—"

"Boswell, I can't tell you how much I—"

"None o' that, either, man. Let's get down to some details. I'll need a
passport."

And somehow from then on, in spite of what might have been held more
humiliating for George than for Winslow in the situation, it was nevertheless
George who took the leadership, a certain staunch four-squareness in his
make-up easily dominating the other. They both belonged to a world in which
the accomplishment of any suddenly urgent task requires the cancelling or
postponement of other less urgent ones; and now, as they eased themselves
back into chairs, there was nothing left but such routine adjustments.
Winslow pulled out a little black notebook and began crossing off this and
that; George reached for a sheet of paper on his desk and jotted down a few
memoranda. Into the momentary silence there came the distant chiming of the
hour on Browdley church clock, and a newsboy shouting familiarly but
incoherently along Market Street. GOOD news, perhaps, about the international
situation... but it did not seem to matter so much now, so quickly can world
affairs be overshadowed by personal ones in the life of even the most public
man.

Winslow looked up. "You're optimistic, Boswell? From your own knowledge of
her—do you feel that—that somehow or other you'll be able to
persuade her to—to—"

George's face was haggard as he replied: "I wouldn't call my own knowledge
so very reliable—not after this."

"Then perhaps you could talk to my son—try to influence
him—"

"Aren't you the one for that?"

"But a new angle, Boswell—YOUR point of view in the matter— he
may not have realized—"

"All right, all right—no good badgering me." The first shock had
been succeeded by anger—helpless anger, which Winslow's concern for his
own son merely exacerbated. "I'm damned if I know what I'll do—
YET."

"I'm sorry again." And the two faced each other, both driven out of
character and somehow aware of it, for it was not like George to be angry,
nor was Winslow accustomed to pleading and apologizing. Presently an odd
smile came over his face. "Badger... BADGER..." he repeated. "It's a long
time since I heard that word, and you'll never guess why it makes me
smile."

"Why?"

"My nickname at school—Badger."

Then George smiled too, glad of the momentary side-issue. "Because you
looked like one or because you did badger people?"

"Both—possibly."

They once called me Apple-Pie George in Browdley, but it sort of died
out."

"Apple-Pie George?"

"Aye... because somebody threw some apple-pie in my face during an
election. The pie stuck but the name didn't." He laughed and Winslow laughed,
and it was as if one of several barriers between them was from then on let
down. "Too bad I haven't that drop of whisky for you," George continued. "But
how about changing your mind about another cup of tea?"

"Thanks, I will."

George went to the door and shouted down the corridor to Annie, then came
back and began to search a time-table on his desk. "If we're both going to
start in the morning, maybe you'd like to spend the night here?"

"That's very kind, but I think I'd better go back to London as I planned
and join you there tomorrow."

"Just as you like. There's a good train at five-eighteen—that still
gives you an hour, so take it easy."

Winslow seemed now better able to do this, and until the time of leaving
they both relaxed, arranged further details of their meeting the next day,
and talked quite casually on a variety of subjects—some even verging on
the intellectual, though George was not in the best mood for
appreciation.

Then he took Winslow to the train, and only in the final minutes before
its departure did they refer to the personal matter again. Winslow muttered,
leaning out of a first-class compartment: "I—I must say it, Boswell
—I—I really don't know how to thank you for—for taking all
this in the way you have..."

"What other way was there to take it?"

"I know, I know... but it's such an extraordinary situation for you to
have been able to come to terms with."

"Who says I've come to terms with it?"

"Yes, but I mean—when I try to imagine myself in your
place—"

"DON'T." And there was just the ghost of a smile on George's face to
soften the harsh finality of the word.

"All right... but I can't help feeling more hopeful already—thanks
to you. Of course the affair's still incomprehensible to me in many ways
—for instance, to fathom the kind of person who could do such a
thing... of course you know her, but then I know Jeff, and he's not a fool
—that's what makes HIS side of it so hard to understand."

"Oh, maybe not so hard," George replied. "It's probably what you said that
you couldn't find a name for."

"Infatuation?"

"If you like." And then, abruptly and without caring for the awkwardness
of time and place, George began to tell something about Livia that he had
never mentioned to anyone before. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of a railway
station that reminded him, for it had happened (he said) at the end of their
honeymoon when they were to catch a night train from a seaside place back to
London. They had spent the last day pottering about the promenade between
showers, and during one of these, while sheltering, they had got into
conversation with a well-dressed and rather distinguished-looking man of
sixty or so. It was one of those chance acquaintanceships that flourish
amazingly without either background or future prospects; almost immediately
the stranger offered to conduct them through an adjacent art gallery which,
though full of very bad canvases, gave him the chance to talk so
fascinatingly about paintings that they thought he must belong to that world
himself until later he talked with equal fascination about literature, music,
and politics. Within an hour they were all chattering together like old
friends, and as evening approached it seemed perfectly natural to accept the
stranger's invitation to dine. (He had given them his name and told them he
was French, which had further amazed George because of his completely
accentless English.) The two newly-weds were presently entertained in a
manner to which they were wholly unaccustomed and which they could certainly
not have afforded—George smilingly declined to break his temperance
pledge, but ate two dozen oysters with gusto while Livia drank champagne and
laughed a great deal. After dinner it seemed equally natural that the
stranger should drive them back to their hotel in his car and later take them
on to the railway station. The train was already drawn up at the platform, so
the three of them sat together in an otherwise unoccupied compartment with
half an hour to wait. Suddenly George discovered the hotel-room key in his
pocket and, excusing himself, walked down the platform to the station office
to arrange for its return. He wasn't away more than ten minutes, and when he
got back the three resumed their conversation until the train's
departure.

About a year later (George went on), Livia exclaimed suddenly, during a
rather trivial quarrel: "That Frenchman sized you up all right—HE said
I oughtn't ever to have married you!" More startled than angry, George then
asked for an explanation. She wouldn't give any at first, but on being
pressed said that during the few minutes he had left her alone in the train
with the stranger, the latter had made her an ardent profession of love and
had actually implored her to run off with him.

When George reached this point in the story he commented rather na vely:
"I suppose that COULD happen, with a Frenchman, even though he'd only set
eyes on her a few hours before."

"Perhaps in that particular way he was unbalanced."

"No—or at least there wasn't much other evidence of it. You see,
having once got interested in the man, I'd found out a few things about him
and followed his career. He'd been married and raised a family long before
his meeting with us, and recently he's become fairly well known as one of the
financial experts to the Peace Conference. You'd recognize the name if I told
you, but I don't think that would be quite fair because a few months ago he
and his wife came to London on some official mission, and there were
photographs of them in the papers looking as if they'd both had a lifetime of
happiness."

"Maybe they had."

A sudden commotion of door-banging and engine-whistling drowned George's
reply and caused him to repeat, more loudly: "I shouldn't wonder."

"There's one other thing that occurs to me, Boswell, if you'll forgive my
mentioning it—"

"Of course."

"HOW DO YOU KNOW THE INCIDENT REALLY HAPPENED?"

The train began to move and George walked with it for a few seconds,
hastily pondering before he answered: "Aye... I can see what you mean...
Funny—I hadn't ever thought of THAT. And yet I should have, I know."
His walk accelerated to a scamper; there was now only time to wave and call
out: "Goodbye... see you tomorrow... Goodbye..."

When the train had left he stood for a moment as if watching it out of
sight, but actually watching nothing, seeing nothing. A porter wheeling a
truck along the platform halted and half turned. "'Night, George."

"Good night," responded George mechanically, then pulled himself together
and walked down the ramp to the station yard.

* * * * *

He felt he must at all costs avoid the main streets where
people would
stop him with congratulations on the success of the day's events. There was a
footpath skirting the edge of the town that meant an extra half-mile but led
unobtrusively towards the far end of Market Street. Nobody went this way at
night except lovers seeking darkness, and darkness alone obscured the
ugliness of the scene—a cindery waste land between town and countryside
and possessing the amenities of neither; it had long been a dream of his to
beautify the whole area with shrubs and lawns, to provide the youth of
Browdley with a more fitting background for its romance. But Browdley youth
seemed not to care, while those in Browdley who were no longer youthful
objected to the cost. Perhaps for the first time in his adult life George now
traversed the waste land without reflecting ruefully upon its continued
existence; he had far more exacting thoughts to assemble, and in truth he
hardly knew where he was. The day that had begun so well was ending in
trouble whose magnitude he had only just begun to explore, and with every
further step came the deepening of a pain that touched him physically as well
as in every other way, so that he felt sick and ill as he stumbled along. He
was appalled by the realization that Livia still had such power to hurt
him.

Sombrely he reached his house and, as he entered it, suddenly felt ALONE.
Which made him think; for he had been just as alone ever since Livia had left
six months before; and if he had not felt it so much, that proved how
hopefully, in his heart, he had looked upon the separation. She would come
back, he must all along have secretly believed; or at least the bare
possibility had been enough to encourage his ever-ready optimism about the
future. Night after night he had entered his empty house, made himself a cup
of tea, spent a last hour with a book or the evening paper, and gone to bed
with the tolerable feeling that anything could be endured provided it might
not last for ever. There was even a half-ascetic sense in which he had found
tolerable his enforced return to bachelorhood, and there was certainly a
peace of mind that he knew her return would disturb—yet how welcome
that disturbance would be! And how insidiously, behind the logic of his
thoughts, he had counted on it!... He was aware of that now, as he entered
his house and felt the alone-ness all-enveloping. Heavily he climbed the
stairs to his bedroom and began to throw a few necessary articles into a
suitcase. Even that he did with an extra pang, for it reminded him of times
when Livia had packed for him to attend meetings or conferences in other
parts of the country; she was an expert packer as well as very particular
about his clothes. And the first thing she did when he returned was to unpack
and repair the ravages of his own carelessness about such things. There was
that odd streak of practicality in her, running parallel to other streaks; so
that she not only loved classical music but could repair the gramophone when
something went wrong with it. And the garden that Winslow had admired was
further evidence; it had been a dumping-ground for waste paper and old tin
cans before she started work on it. Recent months without her attention had
given the weeds a chance, but still her hand was in everything, and the roses
seemed to have come into special bloom that week as if expecting her return.
In a sort of way she had done for that patch of waste land what George
himself had tried to do for Browdley as a whole (yet would never have
bothered to do for his own back garden); but of course she had done it
without any civic sense, and for the simple reason that the place belonged to
her. George sighed as he thought of that, recognizing motives that were so
strong in her and so absent in him; but with the sigh came a wave of
tolerance, as for someone who does simple natural things that are the world's
curse, doubtless, but since they cannot be changed, how pointless it is to
try. Yet the world MUST be changed... and so George's mind ran on, facing an
old dilemma as he snapped the locks on his suitcase. All at once the house,
without Livia in it, became unbearable to him; he knew he would not sleep
that night, and as his train left early in the morning he might as well not
even go to bed; he would take a walk, a long walk that would tire him
physically as well as clarify some of the problems in his mind. He went
downstairs and put on a hat, then passed through the partition-doorway that
separated the house from the printing-office. It was the middle of the week,
the slack time between issues; copy for the next one lay littered on his desk
—mostly local affairs—council meetings, church activities,
births, marriages, and funerals. Occasionally he wrote an editorial about
some national or international event, and the one he had composed that
morning faced him from the copy-desk as unfathomably as if someone else had
written it in another language. It read:

"These are times when the clouds of war roll back and THE SUN OF HUMAN
BETTERMENT shines out to be a lamp of memory for the future. Let us hope,
therefore, that AUGUST 31st, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE, the date
selected as that of the official end of the Great War, will have more than a
merely legal significance, that it will symbolize the actual dying-out of
hatreds and bitterness both at home and abroad. In this connection it is good
news that the Washington Conference is soon to convene, and that the problem
of world-wide DISARMAMENT will then be tackled in real earnest. We of this
town, who have just dedicated our first post-war plan for A BETTER BROWDLEY,
can feel especially proud, for our own achievement makes us part of a mighty
movement in which men of goodwill all over the world are straining to
participate."

(A pretty fair example, incidentally, of George's editorial writing
—typical, at any rate, in its use of capitals, in its opening metaphor
that almost gets out of hand, and in its tendency to glib phrases. Typical
also of George's fondness for linking local and world affairs into a pleasing
dish of optimism.)

And now, reading it over, he had difficulty in gathering what it was all
about. Disarmament? DISARMAMENT?... The word echoed meaninglessly in his mind
as he sought, even for a moment, to concentrate on something non-personal.
What did he know about disarmament? And at the form of that question he
smiled, because of the oddest recollection that came to him there and then,
as he crossed the printing-office to the door leading into Market Street.

It was of something that had happened several years before, when he had
just acquired the almost bankrupt Guardian and was full of visions of the
kind of influence a small-town paper could wield, perhaps even nationally, if
its editor were the right sort, and surely the right sort must be
well-educated, which surely in its turn could mean nothing less than a
university degree. So that had become one of his numerous ambitions, and
since Oxford and Cambridge were out of the question for a man who had a job
to do, he had concentrated on a near-by provincial foundation of decent
repute that offered degrees by examination only. It had been a hard struggle,
even so, for he had originally left school at the age of thirteen, and though
the following decade and a half had contained a good deal of self-education
there were many deplorable gaps. He could write and speak forcefully, for
instance, but before beginning to study he had scarcely heard of the
technicalities of grammar, he had small knowledge of history, and none at all
of any foreign language. At the first of the two necessary examinations he
was baffled by the academic atmosphere, by the courtesy bordering on
indifference of the pedagogue in charge (so unlike the nagging, shouting
schoolmasters of his boyhood days), and he was rather dashed by an English
paper which, though offering the most generous choice of questions, could not
avoid the discovery of so much that he did not know. To one question, couched
in that very phrase—"What do you know of the Pathetic Fallacy?"
—he had replied, pathetically enough: "Nothing"; and there were other
matters nearly as hopeless. Leaving the examination hall after that
three-hour battle he had been fairly certain of failure.

But a few weeks later he received a note asking him to appear at the same
place for oral questioning—which, he was cautioned, did not necessarily
imply that he had passed the written tests. The coolness of the warning
reinforced his pessimism, so that he was in a thoroughly black mood by the
time he faced the ordeal. A tall, thin, spectacled man with a dome-like
forehead and very precise clipped speech presided at the interview. (Ever
afterwards he was the personification of an ideal in George's mind —the
pure scholar, unworldly, incomparable, serenely aloof; so that on meeting
Lord Winslow, for instance, he felt he already knew the type.)

The prototype had talked pleasantly and informally with George's
examination papers before him, and also (though George had not known this)
notes of reminder that the examinee was thirty-one years old, had had nothing
but an elementary-school education, but was already owner and editor of a
local newspaper as well as a town councillor with reputedly advanced views
—altogether a rather remarkable specimen. Clearly George both puzzled
and attracted him, though he gave no sign of it; he merely steered the
conversation from one subject to another—which was not difficult, for
George loved to talk. After half an hour or so the older man nodded, picked
up the examination papers, cleared his throat, and began rather
uncomfortably: "A pity, Mr. Boswell, that you have done so badly in one paper
—English—that your total marks do not reach the required
minimum."

George's conviction of failure, which had somehow become suspended during
the conversation, now returned with a hard hit to the pit of the stomach.
"Aye," he said heavily. "I guessed as much."

"Do you think you will try again, Mr. Boswell?"

"I dunno, sir. I dunno if I'll have the time to."

"Why not?"

"You see, I'm on the local Council and I run a newspaper—there's a
heap of work in all that—work that I can't cut down on. If it was just
a question of giving up fun or a hobby I wouldn't mind, but when it means
important things..."

"Such as?"

"Well, sir, I doubt if you'd be interested in all the details, but I'm
trying to get a post-war slum-clearance scheme adopted by the Council, and
that's a job, I can tell you—if you knew the sort of place Browdley
is."

"H'm, yes... I understand. And I do not dispute the importance of such
work, or the priority you feel you must give to it. What does puzzle me
—a little—is your motive in entering for this examination at all.
Did you feel that a university degree would help you politically— or
professionally?"

"No, sir, it isn't that. But I thought it might help me—sometimes
—inside myself—to feel I was properly educated."

"And what do you mean by 'properly educated'?"

George pondered a moment, then replied: "I'll put it this way, sir—
sometimes I read a book that seems to me just plain stupid, but because I'm
not properly educated I can't be sure whether IT'S stupid or whether I'M
stupid."

A smile creased over the older man's face as he burrowed afresh among the
papers, finally discovering one and holding it up before his spectacles.
"H'm... h'm... Such a pity, Mr. Boswell—such a pity... Mind you, I
didn't mark these English papers myself, so of course I don't know
whether..." And then a long pause, punctuated by more throat-clearings and
spectacle- fidgetings. "Take this question, for instance—'What do you
know of the Pathetic Fallacy?' I see, Mr. Boswell, that your answer is
'Nothing', for which you have been given no marks at all."

George felt it was rather unfair to rub it in; if he had failed, he had
failed; and when (since the examination) he had found out what the Pathetic
Fallacy really was, it had turned out to be so different from anything he
could possibly have guessed that he thought he had at least done well not to
try. So with this vague self-justification in mind he now blurted out: "Well,
sir, it was the truth, anyway. I did know nothing and I said so."

"Precisely, Mr. Boswell. I have no reason to suppose that your answer was
not a perfectly correct one to the question as asked, and if the questioner
had wished to judge your answer on any other merits it seems to me he should
have used the formula 'STATE what you know'—not 'WHAT do you know?' I
shall therefore revise your rating and give you full marks for that
particular question—which, I think, will just enable you to reach the
minimum standard for the examination... My congratulations... I hope you will
find time to work for the final examination next year..."

"Oh yes, sir—yes, INDEED, sir!"

But George hadn't found time, after all, because the year ahead was the
one during which he had met and married Livia.

And what did he know of Livia, for that matter?

* * * * *

Browdley streets were deserted as he closed the door of the
newspaper
office behind him. From Market Street he turned into Shawgate, which is
Browdley's chief business thoroughfare; he walked on past all the shops, then
through the suburban fringe of the town—'the best part of Browdley',
people sometimes called it. But the best part of Browdley isn't, and never
was, so good. The town consists mainly of four-roomed bathroomless houses
built in long parallel rows, dormitories of miners and cotton operatives who
(in George's words to Lord Winslow) had piled up money like muck for a few
local families. George had not added that his wife belonged to one of those
families, even when the mention of Channing and Felsby's mill would have
given him a cue. For Livia was a Channing—one of the Channings of
Stoneclough... and suddenly he decided that, since he was trying to kill time
by walking, he would walk to Stoneclough. It was even appropriate that he
should take there his problem, his distress, and that brooding sub-current of
anger.

Presently his walk quickened and his head lifted as if to meet a
challenge; and in this new mood he reached the top of a small rise from which
Browdley could be seen more magically at night than ever in the daytime; for
at night, especially under a moon, the observer might be unaware that those
glinting windows were factories and not palaces, and that the shimmer beneath
them was no fabled stream, but a stagnant, stinking canal. Yet to George, who
had known all this since childhood, there were still fables and palaces in
Browdley, palaces he would build and fables he would never surrender; and as
he walked to Stoneclough that night and looked back on the roofs of the town,
he had a renewal of faith that certain things were on his side.

The trouble with Livia, he told himself for the fiftieth time, was that
there was no REASON in so many things that she did; or WAS there a reason
this time—the reason he had been reluctant to face?

He climbed steadily along the upland road; it was past one in the morning
when he came within sight of Stoneclough. The foothills of the Pennines begin
there; there is a river also, the same one that flows dirty and sluggish
through Browdley, but clean and swift in its fall from the moorland, where it
cuts a steep fissure called a 'clough', and in so doing gives the place a
name and provides Browdley citizens with a near-by excursion and
picnic-ground. The first cotton mills, driven from a water-wheel, were set up
in such places towards the end of the eighteenth century, and one of them
belonged to a certain John Channing of whom little is known save that he died
rich in the year of Waterloo. The shell of the old greystone mill that made
his fortune still stands astride the tumbling stream; but the rows of hovels
in which the workpeople lived have long since disappeared, though there are
traces of them on neighbouring slopes, where sheep huddle in rain against
weed- grown fireplaces.

Gone too is the first Channing house that adjoined the mill; it was
demolished about the time of Queen Victoria's accession, when the Channing
family, by then not only rich but numerous, built a new and much more
pretentious house on higher ground where the clough meets the moorland. About
this time also it became clear that steam would oust water-power in the
cotton industry, and with this in their shrewd minds the Channings took
another plunge; live miles away, on meadows near what was then the small
village of Browdley, and in partnership with another mill-owner named Felsby,
they built one of the first large steam-driven mills in Lancashire. Other
speculators obligingly built Mill Street for the new workers to live in, and
the same process, repeated during succeeding decades with other mills and
other streets, made Browdley what it is and what it shouldn't be—as
George said (and then waited for the cheer) in his popular lecture 'Browdley
Past and Present', delivered fairly frequently to local literary,
antiquarian, and similar societies. Yes, there was one question at any rate
to which he could return a convincing answer—"What do you know of
Browdley?"—and that answer might well be: "More than anyone else in the
world."

Suddenly George saw the house—the house which, like the locality,
was called Stoneclough. It showed wanly in the moonlight against the
background of moorland and foreground of tree-tops. The moon was flattering
to it, softening its heavy Victorian stolidity, concealing the grim
undershadow that Browdley's smoke had contributed in the course of half a
century of west winds. This was the house the Channings had lived in, the
Channings of Stoneclough. A succession of Channings had travelled the five
miles between Stoneclough and the Browdley mill on foot, on horseback, by
pony carriage and landau, by bicycle and motor-cycle and car, according to
taste and period; and the same succession had added to the house a
hodge-podge of excrescences and outbuildings that had nothing in common save
evidence of the prevalent Channing trait throughout several generations; one
of them might construct a billiard-room, another remodel the stables, yet
another add terraces to the garden or a bow-window to the drawing-room
—but whatever was done at all was done conscientiously, always with the
best materials, and with a rooted assumption of permanence in the scheme of
things.

George saw Stoneclough as a symbol of that assumption, and—because
the house was now empty and derelict—as a hint that such permanence
would have received its virtual death-blow in 1914, even apart from the
special fate of the Channings. Only the gardens had any surviving life, the
shrubs growing together till they made an almost unbroken thicket around the
house, the fences down so that any straggler from the clough could enter the
once-sacred precincts out of curiosity or to gather fuel for a picnic fire.
All the windows were broken or boarded up; everything loot-able from the
interior had long ago been looted. Yet the fabric of the house still stood,
too massive to have suffered, and in moonlight and from a distance almost
beautiful. George wondered, not for the first time, what could be done with
such a property. No one would buy it; no one who could afford repairs and
taxes would want to live there or anywhere near Browdley, for that matter.
Once or twice he had thought of suggesting that the Council take it over for
conversion into a municipal rest-home, sanatorium, or something of the kind
—but then he had cautioned himself not to give his opponents the chance
for another jibe—that he had made Browdley buy his wife's
birthplace.

He did not walk up to the house, but turned back where the road began its
last steep ascent; here, for a space of a few acres, were the older relics
—the original Channing Mill, the broken walls of cottages that had not
been lived in for a hundred years. George never saw them without reflecting
on the iniquity of that early industrial age—eight-year-old children
slaving at machines for fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, sunlight
falling on the tree- tops in the clough as later on rubber forests of the
Congo and the Amazon. Thus had the first Channings flourished; and it might
be Nemesis, of a kind, that had given their grand house to the bats and the
rats. But its quality showed even in ruin; it was a substantial ruin.

* * * * *

By four o'clock George was back in Browdley, tired and a
little footsore.
As he turned into Market Street and fished in his pocket for the door-key
there came a voice from the pavement near his house: "'Ow do, George. Nice
night—but I'd rather be in bed all the same."

"Aye," answered George mechanically. Then, recognizing the policeman on
his beat, a friendly fellow always ready with a joke and (at election times)
with a vote, George pulled himself together and made the necessary response:
"How do, Tom?"

"Fine, thanks—bar a touch of rheumatics... I was at the stone-
layin'. It's bin a grand day for ye, and I wouldn't say ye don't deserve
it."

"Thanks, Tom."

"Ye've worked for it hard enough. I can remember when ye used to swear
ye'd have those Mill Street houses pulled down, and folks'd laugh at ye then,
but I'll bet they can see it's no joke now. Aye, ye've made a grand start.
How long d'you reckon the whole job'll take?"

"Years," George answered (but he would have been shocked if he could have
been told how many). His voice was rather grim, and he did not amplify as he
usually did when anyone encouraged him to discuss his plans. Tom noticed this
and muttered sympathetically: "Well, I'll be gettin' along—mustn't keep
you talkin' this hour... 'Night, George—or rather, good mornin'."

George fumbled the key in the lock and re-entered his house. He felt, as
he had hoped, exhausted, but not, as he had also hoped, insensitive to the
alone-ness. It flew at him now like a wild thing as he strode along the lobby
and heard, in imagination, Livia's call from upstairs that had so often
greeted him when he came home late from meetings—"That you, George?"
Who else did she expect it to be, he would ask her waggishly, and feel sorry
that she was such a light sleeper, since his meetings were so often late and
the late meetings so frequent...

He went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea, sitting there at the
small scrubbed table till dawn showed grey through the windows; then he went
to the room with the books in it which he called his 'study'. The time-table
lay open on the desk, reminding him of the impending journey for which his
tiredness now gave him even physical distaste; and next to the time-table was
the small pile of letters that Annie had brought in during the interview with
Winslow. George glanced through them idly, and with equal distaste. Suddenly
then his glance changed to a gaze and his gaze to a stare, for the writing on
one of the envelopes was Livia's and the postmark was Vienna.

He read it through, and through again, stumbling to his armchair with the
alone-ness all around him as he faced the issue. Time passed in a curious
vacuum of sensation; he did not realize it was so long until he saw the
sunlight brightly shining, glinting already on the gilt titles of his books.
Then he crossed the room to his desk and reached for pen and paper.

He wrote out a wire first of all: "Regret must cancel Vienna trip for
reasons will explain fully in letter."

Then he wrote the letter without pause as follows:

"DEAR LORD WINSLOW—By now you will have got my wire, and are
probably surprised by my change of mind. The reason for it is simply that I
have just read a letter from my wife. It came yesterday—actually while
you and I were discussing things. I put it aside with other letters and only
noticed it an hour ago. Though short, it is a very frank letter, and in view
of what it says there seems little that I can do now—except what Livia
asks. I do not pretend to understand how these things happen, and why, but I
have to take into account her age, which was not much more than half mine
when I married her, so that if it was a mistake, I'd blame myself more than
her. Anyhow, it would be unjust and stupid to expect her to cling to it for
the rest of her life. Maybe she is old enough now to know what she really
does want, and if your son is also, I won't stand in their way—no, I
CAN'T—neither on moral grounds nor for social and professional reasons
such as you might have. So there's nothing I could do in Vienna except make
the whole thing more troublesome for all concerned. Please excuse what may
strike you as a hasty reconsideration and perhaps even the breaking of a
promise, but I've already thought it all over as much as a thing like this
can be thought over. As for what I feel, that matters to no one except
myself, but I would like to say how deeply I appreciate the way you
approached me yesterday. No one could have been kinder and I shall never
forget it.—Yours sincerely, GEO. BOSWELL."

George always signed himself 'Geo.' in important or official letters
because that was how Will Spivey set up his business letter- heads—
'Geo. Boswell, Printer and Bookbinder'. And under that, in smaller type:
'Proprietor of the Guardian Press, Market Street, Browdley'. And under that,
in even smaller type: 'Estimates Free. Good Work Guaranteed.'

* * * * *

About seven o'clock he went to the corner, posted the
letter, and
re-entered his house to find that Annie had returned from spending a night
with her mother across the town and had already noticed his bag half packed
on the bed upstairs. "ANOTHER conference?" she exclaimed. "Why, it's only
last week-end you was away at the last one..."

"It's cancelled," George answered. "I'm not going after all."

"Then I'll unpack your things and have breakfast ready in a jiffy."

George was suddenly aware that he had none of his usual healthy
early-morning appetite, but she was in the kitchen before he could say so,
and by the time he followed her there he had decided he might as well say
everything else that had to be said and get it over.

He stood in the kitchen doorway wondering how to make it sound not too
dramatic, yet not so commonplace that she would miss the full significance.
He began: "By the way, I've had news of Livia." (He always called her 'Livia'
to Annie.)

"You have?... Well, that's nice. Did she say when she was coming
home?"

That was a good opening. "I'm—er—afraid she's— she's NOT
coming home."

"WHAT?" Annie swung round in consternation as she interpreted the remark
in the only way that occurred to her. "Oh, my goodness, she's not—
she's not—you don't mean—" And then a flood of tears.

It was quite a minute before George realized what was in Annie's mind.
Then he had to comfort her and meanwhile explain matters more specifically.
"Good heavens, no—she's all right—she's quite well— nothing
at all's happened to her. She's just not coming home... She's decided
to—to leave me. It does happen sometimes—that people don't hit it
off altogether... I just wanted you to know, so that you can get her clothes
in order—I expect she'll be sending for them soon. No need to talk
about it in the town yet, though of course people will have to know sooner or
later." (And no need, yet, to tell even Annie the other details.)

Annie, having been heart-broken, now became furious. She belonged to a
world in which women do not leave their husbands, but regard themselves as
lucky to get and keep any man who does not drink, gamble, or beat them. And
George not only possessed these negative virtues, but others to which Annie
had for years accorded increasing admiration. She really believed him to be a
great man, and for a wife to be dissatisfied with such a paragon seemed to
her incomprehensible as well as shocking. She had never liked Livia as much
as George, and that made her now feel that she had never liked Livia at all.
"She's a bad lot," she whimpered scornfully. "And it's all you could expect
from where she comes from."

"Nay... nay..." said George pacifyingly. "She's all right, in her own way.
And maybe I'm all right in mine."

"I never really took to her," Annie continued. "And I'm not the only
one... There was something queer about her, or folks wouldn't have talked the
way they did about her father's death and what she had to do with it—
because there's never no smoke without fire—"

"Oh yes, there is, often enough," George interrupted sharply.

"Well, anyhow, there was something queer about Stoneclough altogether
—what with ghosts and drownings and everything—and I'm sorry if
I've let out something I wasn't supposed to..."

She was on the point of weeping again, so George made haste to reassure
her. "Oh, that's all right, Annie. I don't think you could tell me much that
I didn't hear at the time. But it was all gossip—not worth repeating
now or even remembering—that's the way I look at it. I doubt if we'll
ever know the whole truth about what really happened." He found something he
could force a smile at. "And as for the ghosts—why, that's only an old
yarn—a sort of local legend... I heard it long before Livia was
born..."

Livia had first heard it from Sarah (combined cook, nurse,
and housekeeper to the Channing family for half a century); it was the story
of three girls who had lived about a hundred years ago in the cottages in the
clough. They had been little girls, not more than nine or ten, and in those
days children of that age went to work at the Channing Mill (the original one
that straddles the stream where the water-wheel used to be); and what was
more, they had to get up in the dark of early morning to be at their machines
by half-past five. Because they were always so sleepy at that hour the three
had an arrangement among themselves that while they hurried from their homes
they should link arms together, so that only the middle girl need keep awake;
the two others could then run with eyes closed, half sleeping for those few
extra minutes. They took it in turns, of course, to be the unlucky one. But
one winter's morning the middle girl was so sleepy herself that she couldn't
help closing her eyes too, with the result that all ran over the edge of the
path into the river and were drowned. And so (according to legend—the
story itself might well have been true) the ghosts of the three are sometimes
to be seen after dark in the clough, scampering with linked arms along the
path towards the old mill.

Sarah told this to Livia by way of warning to the child never to stray out
of the garden into the clough, for it was always dark there under the trees,
and also, added Sarah, improving the legend to suit the occasion, the ghosts
were really liable to be seen at any time of the day or night. But that made
Livia all the more eager to stray. She was an only child, without playmates,
and it would surely be breathlessly exciting to meet three possible playmates
all at once, even if they were only ghosts. She was not afraid of ghosts. In
fact she was not then, or ever, afraid of anything, but she had a precocious
aversion to being bored, and it WAS boring to sit in the Stoneclough
drawing-room with her nose pressed to the window-pane, staring beyond the
shrubs of the garden to that downward distance whence she believed her
father, in some mysterious way, would return, since that was the way Sarah
said he had gone.

One grey October afternoon she managed to elude Sarah and escape from the
house. There was a wet mist over the moorland; the shrubs of the garden
dripped noisily as she ran among them and through the gate into the forbidden
clough. She ran on, under the drenched trees, keeping watch for the ghosts,
and presently the moisture that had been mist higher up turned to heavy rain;
then she grew tired and cold, and—though still not in the least
afraid—considerably disheartened by not meeting anyone. At last she
came to the road to Browdley, though she did not recognize it, never having
been walked so far by Sarah or her mother; but as she stared round, a horse
and carriage came along which she did recognize. The horse was William, and
Watson was driving, and inside the carriage, calling to her from the window,
was her mother.

So she was promptly rescued and made to sit on the familiar black cushions
through which the ends of hairs stuck out and pricked her legs. It was an
unfortunate encounter, for it doubtless meant that her mother would tell
Sarah and Sarah would be cross (which Livia did not fear, but it was tiresome
to anticipate), and worst of all, she would be watched henceforward more
carefully than ever. So she made a quick and, for a child, a rather
remarkable decision; she would say she had met the three little girls—
the ghostly ones—in the clough, and had run after them because they
beckoned her. That could serve, at worst, as an excuse; at best, it might
completely divert attention from her own misdeed. Yet as she began, a moment
later, she was curiously aware that her mother was showing little interest in
the story; nor did she seem angry, or startled, or impressed, or any of the
other things that Livia, aged four, had ideas but no words for. Her mother
merely said: "Livia, you're wet through—you must have a bath and change
all your clothes as soon as you get home."

Nor later on was there any crossness even from Sarah, but instead a
strange unhappy vagueness, as if she were thinking of something else all the
time. When Livia retold her yarn, Sarah answered disappointingly: "It's only
a story, Livia, you mustn't really believe it. There aren't any such things
as ghosts."

"Isn't there the Holy Ghost?" Livia asked, remembering religious
instruction imparted by Miss Fortescue, who came to the house every week-day
morning, and seemed already to Livia the repository of everything knowable
that one did not particularly want to know.

"That's different... Go to sleep now."

Not till the following morning was Livia told that her father was dead;
and this was not true.

* * * * *

She had been a baby at the time of her father's trial and
sentence, so
that the problem of how much to tell her, and how to explain his absence or
her mother's distress, had not immediately arisen. The year had been the last
one of the nineteenth century or the first of the twentieth (according to
taste and argument); events in South Africa had gone badly, and men were
being recruited for the least romantic, though by its supporters and
contemporaries the most romanticized, of all England's wars. Emily Channing,
who was a romanticist about that and everything else, concocted a dream in
which her husband obtained his release to enlist, and eventually, on kop or
veldt, 'made good' by some extraordinary act of gallantry which would earn
him the King's pardon and possibly a V.C. as well. It was an absurd idea, for
British justice is unsentimental to the point of irony, preferring to keep
the criminal fed, clothed, and housed in perfect safety at the country's
expense, while the non- criminals risk and lose their lives on foreign
fields. Channing knew this, and was not in the least surprised when the
appeal his wife had persuaded him to make was turned down. But Emily was
heartbroken, the more so as she had already told Livia that her father was
'at the war'. It was a simple explanation in tune with the spirit of the
times; Emily had found no difficulty in giving it, but Livia was really too
young to know what or where 'the war' was, and only gradually absorbed her
father's absence into a private imagery of her own.

A couple of years later, however, the South African War was history, and
there came that grey October day in 1903 when even a prison-interview between
husband and wife could not avoid discussion of the matter. For John Channing,
after several years to think things over, was in a somewhat changed mood.
Till then Emily and he had always comforted each other with talk of her
waiting for him and the ultimate joys of reunion; but now, during the
half-hour that was all they were allowed once a month, he suddenly told her
they must both face facts. And the facts, he pointed out, were that with the
utmost remission of sentence for good conduct he would not be released until
1913, by which time he would be fifty, she would be thirty-eight, and Livia
fourteen.

But Emily (as before remarked) was a romanticist, and the interview was
distressing in a way that no earlier one had been. Sincerely loving her
husband, she could accept only two attitudes as proof of his continued love
for her: that he should, as heretofore, expect her to wait for him, or that
he should melodramatically beg her to 'try to forget' him. And now, in this
changed mood, he was doing neither. He was merely advising her that she
should live her life realistically, feel free to make any association
elsewhere that might at any time promise happiness, and forget him without
feeling guilty if that should seem the easiest thing to do. If, on the other
hand, this did not happen, and at the end of the long interval they both felt
they could resume their lives together, then that would clearly be an
experiment to be attempted. As for Livia, the suggestion he made was equally
realistic—that the child should be told the plain truth as soon as she
was old enough to understand it. "Why not? You certainly won't be able to
carry on with the war story now that there isn't a war."

"I could tell her you were abroad," Emily suggested, "doing some important
work. Or I could say you were an explorer... And perhaps there WILL be
another war somewhere soon."

John Channing smiled—and his smile, Emily felt, was also different
from usual. It was a slanting, uncomfortable smile, and it lasted a long time
before he answered: "No, Emily—just tell her the truth. Of course
you'll have to be judge of the right moment, but there's really no way out of
telling her, once she begins to have school friends. And it would be far
better for her to learn the facts from you than to pick them up in garbled
scraps from other children."

"I shall tell her you're innocent, of course."

The smile recurred. "Oh no, NO, Emily—don't ever do that. First,
because I'm not, and second, because it would give her a grudge to go through
life with—the worst possible thing for a youngster. Say that I'm guilty
of what I'm here for, but you can add, if you like, that I'm not personally a
vile character... That is, if you agree that I'm not."

"Wouldn't that be very hard for her to understand at her age?"

"At any age, Emily. Sometimes even I find it hard to grasp. But I'd rather
have her puzzled about me than indignant on my behalf."

But Emily, distressed as she was, nevertheless declined to accept that
alternative herself. To be puzzled was the one thing she abhorred, and to
avoid it she could almost always discover a romantic formula. That accounted
for her mood when, towards twilight as she returned home after the interview,
she saw Livia wandering in the road below the clough; it was why she failed
to scold her, or to listen to her prattle about ghosts; and it was why, next
morning, after long consultations with Sarah and Miss Fortescue, she told
Livia the only possible romantic lie about her father except that he was
innocent; and that was, that he was dead. He had been killed, she said, in
South Africa, and the war for which he had given his life had ended in
victory. Emily found it possible to say all this convincingly, with genuine
tears, and without going into awkward details. Doubtless in a few years (she
reckoned) the truth would have to come out, but when it did it might even
seem relatively GOOD news to a child of maturer intelligence; while for the
time being it surely could not upset Livia too much to think that a father
whom she did not remember had died a hero. Pride more than grief seemed the
likely emotion.

Livia felt neither, however, so much as a queer kind of relief. She wept
easily when her mother wept, for much the same reason that she made imitative
noises when the dog barked or the cat mewed; but she had stared out of the
drawing-room window with such protracted hopes of her father's return that it
was almost pleasanter not to have to expect him any more. Instead, she
promptly added a new legend to that of the three little girls whose ghosts
were supposed to haunt the neighbourhood. She persisted in telling people
(the people at Stoneclough, for she never met anyone else) that she often saw
her father's ghost in the clough, smoking and walking slowly and looking at
the trees. She was so circumstantial in describing all this that Miss
Fortescue grew nervous about driving to Browdley after dark, though there
were several flaws in Livia's story when Miss Fortescue analysed it. For
instance, how could Livia, who did not remember her father, even pretend to
recognize his ghost? And then, too, the detail about the smoking. Not only
had John Channing been a non-smoker, but Miss Fortescue was also sure that
ghosts could not smoke. Livia, however, replied stoutly: "My daddy's ghost
DOES."

Which presented a problem that Emily, Miss Fortescue, Sarah, Dr. Whiteside
(the family physician), and a few others were wholly unable to evaluate, much
less to solve. Could it be that the child, in addition to BELIEVING a lie
(which was only right and proper, in the circumstances), was also capable of
TELLING one? Miss Fortescue thought not, again adducing the 'smoking' detail.
If Livia had uttered a falsehood with deliberate intent to deceive, surely
she would not have invented such an incongruity; therefore, did it not prove
that she was speaking what at least she regarded as the truth?

In fact, it was neither a lie nor the truth, but some halfway vision in a
child's-eye view of the world, a vision that could start as easily from a lie
deliberately told, and as easily end by sincerely believing it. Those three
children, for instance; Livia had undoubtedly lied in claiming to have seen
them, but later her fancy convinced her that she DID see them, more than
once; and this made her forget that she had lied in the first place. Nor was
it ever a conscious lie that she saw her father, for by that time the clough
was a place where she could see anything and anybody. The high trees arching
over the stream as it tumbled from the moorland, the ruins of the old
cottages where grass grew through the cracks of the hearthstones, the winding
path leading down from the Stoneclough garden to the road—these were
the limits of a world that did not exist elsewhere save in Grimm and Hans
Andersen and the Tanglewood Tales—a world as young as the children who
lived in it and the belief that alone made it real.

And in the other world, meanwhile, she continued to learn Mathematics,
Spelling, Geography, History and 'Scripture' from Miss Fortescue, who was
everlastingly thrilled by the secret that could not yet be told and by her
own forbearance in not telling it; she also understood children just enough
to feel quite certain that she understood Livia completely, which she never
did. Old Sarah, who professed no subtleties, came much closer when she
remarked, leaning over the child's first attempts at arithmetic— "Queer
stuff they put into your head, Livia—no wonder you see ghosts after
it." And it was Sarah who saw nothing queer at all in Livia's question, when
Miss Fortescue had informed her that Ben Nevis was the highest mountain in
the United Kingdom: "Please, Miss Fortescue, what's the LOWEST?"

* * * * *

Another war did begin, as Emily had envisaged (but it was
between Russia
and Japan, and so not one in which an English household had to take sides);
meanwhile Livia passed her sixth birthday; meanwhile also the cotton trade
boomed and then slumped. This would have mattered more at Stoneclough had not
Emily possessed a little money of her own; indeed, it was a subject of bitter
comment throughout Browdley, where hundreds had been ruined as a result of
the Channing crash, that the family responsible for it seemed to be
flourishing just as formerly. But this was not quite accurate. Browdley did
not realize how much had been abandoned—the town house in London, the
holidays at Marienbad, the platoon of servants; and while to Browdley life at
Stoneclough was itself a luxury, to Emily it was an economy enforced by the
fact that the house was of a size and style that made it practically
unsaleable, and thus cheaper to stay in than to give up. So they stayed
—she and Livia and Miss Fortescue and Watson the gardener-coachman-
handyman (a truly skeleton staff for such an establishment); and the blacker
the looks of Browdley people, as trade worsened and times became harder, the
more advantageous it seemed that Stoneclough was so remote although so close
—a moorland fastness that no one from the town need approach save in
the mood and on the occasions of holidays. All of which, in its own way,
conditioned Livia's childhood. Sundays in summer-time were the days when she
must, above all things, remain within the half-mile of garden fence;
week-days in winter-time permitted her the greatest amount of freedom. It was
easy, by this means, to keep her ignorant of everything except Miss
Fortescue's teachings and a general impression that all nature was kind and
all humanity to be avoided.

And Emily, who liked to put things off anyway, kept putting off the time
for correcting all this. "Next year perhaps," she would say, whenever Dr.
Whiteside mentioned the matter. He was an old man who had brought both Livia
and Livia's father into the world; he did not greatly care for Emily and
doubted the wisdom of most things that she did. "It's time the child went to
school and mixed with people," he kept urging. "Why don't you tell her the
truth and get it over? You'll have her self-centred and neurotic if she stays
here seeing nobody but you and Sarah and Miss Fortescue... What does John
think about it?"

"He left it to me to tell her when I think the moment is right," replied
Emily, with strained accuracy. "She's only eight, remember."

But it was just the same when Emily was able to say "She's only nine" and
"She's only ten". And by that time also another thing had happened. John had
been transferred to a prison in the south of England, and Emily no longer saw
him every month. After all, it was a long journey just for the sake of one
short interview, and it was possible also to wonder what good it did, either
to him or her; letters were much easier.

Not that Emily was a hard-hearted woman—far from it. She had no
bitterness against her husband for either the crash or the crime, or even
against the country for having jailed him; she had no conviction that he
deserved his punishment—nor, on the other hand, that he had been
monstrously over-punished. The whole situation was one she could no longer
come to terms with at all, since it had passed the stage of romantic
interpretation. She was still able to weep whenever she thought of him, but
equally able to go without thinking of him for long periods, and the idea of
raking the whole thing up by telling Livia was not only distasteful, but
something she was a little scared of. Already she was aware of something in
Livia—character or personality or whatever one called it—that
outclassed her own. For one thing, Livia had no fear—of ghosts, or
being alone, or anything else. And also she would sometimes make scenes
—curious, nerve-racking scenes that made Emily feel peculiarly
helpless. Perhaps Dr. Whiteside was right and the child WAS neurotic—
but would the knowledge that her father was in prison make her any less so?
It was easy to think not.

Nor was it clear that Livia would be made happier by school, for in
addition to hating the idea of it, the child also seemed perfectly happy at
Stoneclough. She had far more freedom than children have in many homes; she
could play with dogs, cats, chickens, tame rabbits, and William the horse;
she liked and was permitted to make cooking experiments in the kitchen and
planting experiments in the garden; she could walk endlessly over near-by
moorland and through the clough on week-days; she could read library books
sent up from Mudie's in London, and there was that new invention, the
phonograph, to amuse her. And on Sundays, to brighten the one day of
restriction, old Mr. Felsby usually called. But it did not brighten things so
much for Livia, who early formed the opinion that Mr. Felsby was a bore.

Richard Felsby was seventy-eight, oaken in physique, the last of a
generation destined to glower (within gilt frames) from above thousands of
mantelpieces upon dwindling families. Both the Channings and the Felsbys
were, in this matter, typical; once so prolific, they seemed now in danger of
reaching a complete full- stop, for only the surviving Richard, the absent
John, and the infant Livia could claim direct descent from the original
Channing and Felsby who had built up the firm. The last of the Felsbys could
not forgive the last of the John Channings—not so much on personal
grounds (for Richard, disliking John's new-fangled business ideas long before
the crash came, had dissolved partnership and retired a rich man), but
because of the disgrace to the Channing name in a world that still associated
a Channing with a Felsby. It was said that the trial and the scandal
connected with it had aged Richard considerably, and if so, there were many
in Browdley who wished it had done more, for the old man was generally
disliked. When younger he had been against drinking, smoking, gambling,
dancing, and theatre-going (anything, indeed, that might lessen the week-day
efficiency of his employees); but of later years he had mellowed to the
extent that he only scowled wordlessly if he came across Livia sewing or
reading a novel during one of his Sunday visits. He did not much care for
Emily, though he felt he ought to keep an eye on her; he was disappointed in
Livia, because she was not a boy to carry on and rehabilitate the Channing
name; and, as before remarked, he could not forgive John. But he was old
enough both to remember and revere the memory of John's father, who had died
some years before the turn of the century. Friend, partner, and contemporary,
this earlier John had been, in Richard's opinion, the last of the 'good'
Channings; and it was for his sake, chiefly, that the old man now visited
Stoneclough.

Besides being thus a tribute to the dead, the weekly visits were an
undoubted trial to the living, for Richard honestly believed he conferred
great benefits by patting Livia on the head and by discussing the state of
the cotton trade in a loud voice with Emily. He discussed this because, with
Livia hovering about, and in his usual mood by the time he arrived at the
house, it was practically the only thing he dared discuss; for Dr. Whiteside
had warned him against undue excitement, however caused. If he had anything
to say about John he would therefore take Emily into a corner for a session
of mysterious sibilant whispering, and sometimes in the middle of this Livia
would burst into the room, whereupon Richard would boom out again about the
state of the cotton trade. After this sort of thing had happened a few times
Livia grew convinced that there was a 'mystery' about her mother and old Mr.
Felsby, and once the idea got into her head she was quick to notice other
evidences of mystery—certain occasions, for instance, just before and
just after her mother went away for a few days, when a curious air of tension
filled the entire house, when even Sarah and Miss Fortescue seemed to rush
from room to room with secrets as well as pins filling their mouths. Livia
noted too the almost guilty look they had if she interrupted them at such
times; it made her determined to discover what everything was all about, like
the detectives in some of her favourite stories. Actually 'the Mystery of
Stoneclough' (as she privately decided to call it) gave her an added interest
in life, since it was clearly more exciting to LIVE in a detective story than
merely to read one, especially when the detective was herself. For that
matter, she sometimes imagined she was the criminal also, or the suspected
person who was really innocent, or the stupid policeman who made all the
mistakes, or any other of the familiar characters... it was so easy, and so
fascinating, to climb on the moors and lie down and imagine things.

On the afternoon of Christmas Day, 1910, Livia entered the drawing- room
just in time to catch Mr. Felsby inveighing against "any man who makes a
proposal of that kind". In truth, there was nothing particularly mysterious
about the words, since they referred to the wickedness of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd George, who was still bent on increasing taxes), but
from force of habit Emily shot the old man a warning look, whereat Richard
assumed his glassiest Christmas smile and reached out his less arthritic
hand. Livia then allowed herself to be patted on the head as usual; but
later, while Mr. Felsby enjoyed his usual nap, she pondered alone in the
downstairs room which was her own whenever Miss Fortescue was away, since it
was there that she received lessons, played quiet games, and felt entrenched
in extra-special privacy. She was still pondering, with a book on her knee,
when she overheard something else—her mother telephoning from the hall
outside. Without any intention to eavesdrop at first, she gathered it was a
trunk call from London, and after that she listened deliberately. The talk
continued, with long pauses and a lowering of her mother's voice in short
staccato replies; at last she heard her end up—"I can't hear
you—yes—no—I still can't hear you—I'll write... yes,
I'll think about it... yes, dear, happy Christmas to you too... Goodbye..."
Livia then put aside her book and abandoned herself to wondering who 'dear'
was and what 'it' was that her mother had promised to think about; and
suddenly, as she speculated, an idea came that she instantly labelled as
absurd, yet instantly allowed to take possession of her; supposing 'it' had
been a proposal of marriage? Doubtless the remark of Mr. Felsby's she had
overheard was really responsible; anyhow, during the next few minutes the
idea became a perfectly tenable theory, and by the time her mother called her
to tea the theory had developed into a near-certainty, strengthened by the
absence of any comment about the telephone call. It would have been natural,
Livia thought, for her mother to say—"Guess who rang up just now?"
—and because this did not happen Livia stifled her own natural impulse,
which was to ask.

Presently, however, the near-certainty slipped back into a mere theory
again, and then into its proper place as an absurd idea; a few guests began
to arrive for the Christmas dinner, and the whole thing passed out of mind
till it was revived hours later by a remark of Mr. Felsby's about something
else altogether—he was discussing the state of the cotton trade and
trying to be seasonably cheerful about it. "There's only one thing I can say,
Whiteside—booms come after slumps just as slumps come after booms."

Dr. Whiteside, who wasn't particularly interested in the cotton trade,
though indirectly, like any other Browdley professional man, he depended on
it for the quality of his living, responded absently: "That's about it,
Richard. It's always been the same."

"How do you know it always WILL be the same?" Livia asked, with an air of
casualness. "How do you know that this time it isn't different?"

Every eye was turned on a girl of eleven who could put such a question;
Dr. Whiteside blinked quizzically, and after a rather awkward pause Mr.
Felsby cleared his throat and snorted: "Never you mind. You'll know what we
mean when you grow up."

All at once Livia became really interested, but with a far-away rapt look
that drew even more curious stares around the table. "But I know what you
mean NOW," she said quietly. "And I don't think it's right."

Richard Felsby snorted again, then gave a cross look to Emily, as if this
were all her fault for not bringing up the child to have better manners;
while Emily, with her own typical gesture of helplessness, began to
expostulate: "Now, Livia dear, how CAN you contradict Mr. Felsby?"

"Nothing's ever just the same," Livia repeated, cryptically and with the
utmost adult solemnity. She had an odd feeling of being actually adult at
that moment, of being carried along by an emotion that grew with its own
momentum—as if she were dramatizing something in a rather marvellous
extempore way. The drama she had constructed that afternoon was now an even
bigger one in which she heard herself speaking lines as if they were being
dictated by some inner yet half-random compulsion.

"Livia dear—what on earth do you mean?"

"Nothing can be just the same, even if it does happen again. It can't,
mother." Gradually, inexorably, the words moved to the vital point of attack,
and her eyes flashed as she challenged the other eyes across the table
—no, across the footlights that she had read about and imagined, but so
far never seen. She knew she was acting, yet she could have vowed that her
emotion was not wholly counterfeit.

"But—Livia—whatever's the matter? Has anything upset you?"

"Nothing, mother, except that... Oh, how could you even THINK of such a
thing?... after being married to father..."

And at that moment she really meant it; the man whom she did not remember
was now more than a ghost, he was at last a holy ghost, in his daughter's
imagination.

A short time afterwards Livia, weeping and exhausted in her bedroom, gave
way to equally sincere remorse. She knew that the strange scene had spoilt
the evening, that it had distressed her mother, embarrassed Dr. Whiteside,
infuriated Mr. Felsby, and caused the party to break up early; she knew she
had in some way been rather wicked. "Oh, mother, I'm so TERRIBLY sorry. I
don't know WHAT could have possessed me. I'll never, NEVER say such things
again... It all sprang out of nothing—I just heard you talking on the
telephone to someone, and the idea got hold of me that it was a man proposing
to you..."

Livia felt her mother's hand tighten over her own. "But—
darling..."

"Yes, I know, mother. I know it's silly."

But Emily didn't think it was silly so much as uncanny. There was, of
course, no question of her marrying; that was impossible under the existing
conditions of British law. But she had fallen in love, and it was that man
who had telephoned, begging her to come to London again as early as possible
in the New Year. His name was Standon, and he had met Emily by chance in a
London restaurant on her return north from one of those no longer monthly
visits. He was several years her junior, and lived in a studio in Baron's
Court, painting portraits when he could get commissions, and idling when he
could not. He liked Emily because she was easy-going and had money; she loved
him because he was attractive and also (though she did not realize this)
because she was starved for the kind of attention he was always most happy to
provide. It was not a bad bargain, in the circumstances.

* * * * *

After the scene at the Stoneclough Christmas dinner-table
of which Dr.
Whiteside had been a witness, he pressed his argument that Livia should be
told the truth and then allowed to mix with children of her own age; and even
Emily (thinking of Mr. Standon) realized that something had to be done.
However, a solution occurred to her of a kind that she delighted in—
one that really solved nothing, but merely delayed the issue. Why not send
Livia to a good boarding-school in another part of the country? In such
surroundings could she not mix with children of her own age AS WELL AS remain
in happy ignorance about her father? If the headmistress were let into the
secret beforehand, surely there was no reason why the plan should not work
out perfectly?

So Livia went to Cheldean, in Sussex, where for the first time in her life
she was thoroughly unhappy. She had tried to look forward to meeting other
girls, imagining that they would all be eager to know her; but the facts of
school life, and even more the fictions, brought quick disillusionment. She
could not fit herself easily into the patterns of schoolgirl right and wrong,
of not doing things that were 'not done', of avoiding taboos. And questions
that Miss Fortescue would have tried to answer even though they were
unanswerable were thought merely exhibitionist or absurd at Cheldean; so
after a few unwelcome experiences Livia ceased to ask them. That helped to
lessen her initial unpopularity, the more so as she was growing up rather
personably; she was a girl one would look at twice, even if one did not agree
that she was beautiful.

Meanwhile the cotton trade in and around Browdley slumped further, giving
Mr. Felsby more to shout about during family dinners that took place at least
once during every school vacation. And also during one of these vacations
Livia was introduced to this man called Standon, who spent a week-end at
Stoneclough for the ostensible purpose of advising Emily about a colour
scheme for the drawing-room. The visit was not an entire success, for Sarah
thought it nonsense that a man should travel all the way from London to tell
anyone how to paint a house, while Miss Fortescue could not believe that a
youth with such exquisite manners was not somehow a deceiver. Livia simply
did not like him. All this was a rather poor reward for Mr. Standon's efforts
to be agreeable to everybody, as well as for Emily's carefully planned scheme
to introduce him to the family without causing too much comment. But it was
impossible for Mr. Standon not to cause comment, and though Mr. Felsby did
not meet him, rumours of his visit got through to the old man and gave him
material for unlimited banter afterwards. "And how's your painter friend?" he
would ask, nudging Emily in the ribs. "Still sleeping with nothing on?" (This
was according to a horrified report made by Sarah after taking a cup of tea
up to Mr. Standon's bedroom early one morning.) Of course Mr. Felsby did not
for a moment suspect that Emily was privileged to know how Mr. Standon
slept.

Standon, on his side, also realized that the visit had not worked out as
well as had been hoped, but he was less disappointed than Emily because he
had found the entire weekend rather a bore—awful house, undistinguished
food, uncouth servants, wet days, bleak scenery, and a precocious brat of a
girl on holiday from a boarding- school who (he could see) continually got on
her mother's nerves. Altogether he thought Emily much more fun in Baron's
Court, and hoped that all their subsequent meetings would be on his own
ground. He really DID like her, and forbore to sponge more than a poor artist
must on a better-off woman. (For instance, she was going to buy him a
motor-car, but in return he had promised to teach her to drive.) Knowing all
about her past, having investigated it from newspaper files long before she
told him, he could feel with some justification that he was being as good to
her as to himself.

As for Livia, she immediately connected Mr. Standon in her mind with the
secret, or the mystery, or whatever it was—the more so as he was always
whispering privately to her mother—MORE secrets, MORE mystery. And
Emily, who had romantically set store on Livia liking him, was chagrined that
the girl didn't, and told her (truthfully but far too outspokenly on one
occasion) that OF COURSE she wasn't going to marry Mr. Standon. Whereupon
Livia, surprised at the denial of something that had not been suggested,
could feel only extra certainty that there WAS something between them—
SOMETHING, at any rate. A few terms of Cheldean had even given her a vague
idea of what, and because she did not like Mr. Standon, she did not like the
idea of that either. Whereupon a rift opened between mother and daughter,
more insidious because neither would tackle it frankly; it was as if they
understood each other too well, but also not enough. Anyhow, Livia went back
to Cheldean with thoughts that cast a shadow over a term that happened to be
her last. The shadow made it hard for her to write home, and once, when she
had composed a letter in which she tried to be affectionate, a feeling of
guilt, almost of shame, made her tear it up.

It was Livia's last term at Cheldean because of another unpleasant thing
that happened.

For some time there had been an epidemic of minor thieving on the school
premises—money and small articles missing from dormitories, coats left
in the locker-room, and so on—the sort of thing that, if it for long
goes undetected, can poison the relationships of all concerned— pupils,
teaching staff, and school servants. Miss Williams, the Cheldean
headmistress, had done all she could to probe and investigate, yet the thefts
continued, culminating in the disappearance of a wrist-watch belonging to
Livia's best friend. When news of this reached Miss Williams she summoned the
whole school into the main hall—an event which, from its rarity, evoked
an atmosphere of heightened tension.

Miss Williams began by saying that, being convinced the thefts had been
perpetrated by one of the girls, she had decided to call in a detective who
would doubtless discover the culprit, whoever she was, without delay. She
(Miss Williams) therefore appealed to this culprit (again WHOEVER SHE WAS) to
come forward and confess, thus avoiding the need for distasteful outside
publicity, and also—here Miss Williams began to glare round the room
—earning perhaps some remission of penalty.

This appeal was followed by a long and, to Livia, terribly dramatic
silence during which the word "detective", as spoken by Miss Williams, turned
somersaults in her mind.

Then: "Well, girls? How long is one of you going to keep me waiting?"

Still silence.

Miss Williams glared round again before raising her voice a notch higher.
"Girls... GIRLS... I simply cannot believe this. Surely I am to get an
answer?... Remember—I am particularly addressing myself to ONE of you
—to one of you who is a THIEF—HERE—NOW—in this hall!
Some of you must be so close that you could TOUCH her..."

Suddenly Livia felt herself melting into a warmth that seemed to run
liquid in her limbs; she could not check it, and in excitement let go a book
she was carrying; everyone near her turned to stare, and she knew that her
face was already brick-red.

"Come now, girls... I will wait for sixty seconds and no longer..." Miss
Williams then pulled an old-fashioned gold watch on a long chain from some
pocket of her mannish attire and held it conspicuously in the palm of her
hand. "TEN seconds already... TWENTY... THIRTY..." And then, in a quite
different voice: "Dear me... will somebody go after Olivia?"

Somebody did, and presently Livia was sitting, limp and still, on the
couch in Miss Williams' study, while Miss Williams, stiff and fidgety,
drummed her bony fingers on the desk-top.

"But, Olivia... why do you keep on saying you didn't do it?"

"I didn't, Miss Williams. You can punish me if you like—I'm not
afraid. But I really didn't do it."

"But nobody's even accusing you—nobody ever HAS accused you!"

"They thought it was me—they all saw how I looked—and then
when I dropped the book—"

"My dear child, if they did think you behaved suspiciously, whom have you
to blame but yourself? What made you run out of the hall like that? Surely,
if you knew you weren't guilty—"

"I knew, Miss Williams, but I couldn't help it. I wasn't guilty, and yet
—and yet—"

"Yes, Olivia?"

"I FELT guilty."

Miss Williams's eyes and voice, till then sympathetic, now chilled over.
"I cannot understand how you could FEEL guilty unless you WERE guilty," she
said after a pause.

After another pause Miss Williams replied: "Suppose we say no more about
it for the time being."

And there the matter had to remain, for the plain fact was that Miss
Williams did not know whether Livia was guilty or not. She rather liked the
girl, who had never been in any serious trouble before; yet there was
something odd about her, something unpredictable; yet also something stoic
—which was another thing Miss Williams rather liked. She could not
avoid thinking of the secret that Livia did not know, and perhaps ought to
know, at her age... or DID she know already... partly... in the half-
guessing way that was the worst way to get to know anything? That feeling of
guilt, for instance (assuming there had been no grounds for it at Cheldean)
—could it be that Livia suspected something in her own family to which
guilt attached, and (by a curious psychological twist) was becoming herself
infected by it? Miss Williams had not received a very good impression of Mrs.
Channing from the correspondence they had had; she seemed a weak, dilatory
person, incapable of facing her own or her daughter's problems with any kind
of fortitude. Whereas fortitude, and problems, were Miss Williams's
specialties—whether, for instance, a head-mistress should tell one of
her girls something she had promised not to tell, if she believed it was in
the girl's best interest? For several weeks Miss Williams debated this
problem with herself, while she continued to find things likable in Livia;
she even admired the girl for the way she faced up to the deepening mistrust
with which the school as a whole regarded her; she admired the girl's proud
yet stricken eyes as she continued to take part in games and lessons; but she
had had enough experience as a schoolmistress to know that nothing but
absolute proof of someone else's guilt could ever put things right, and if
this did not soon appear, then there would arise a final problem— could
Livia remain at Cheldean without harm to herself and to the morale of the
school?

One day towards the end of term Miss Williams reached a decision. She
called the girl into her room and very simply told her the plain truth about
her father. There was no scene, but after a long pause Livia said: "Can I go
home now, Miss Williams?"

"HOME? You mean—to your mother?"

"Yes."

"Why do you want to go home?"

"I—I MUST go. Everything's different. I said it would be. Nothing
can ever be the same again."

Miss Williams did not ask when Livia had made this cryptic prophecy; she
merely remarked: "I hope you're not angry with your mother—she did what
she thought was for the best."

"I'm not angry with anybody. Not even with Mr. Standon any more."

"And who's Mr. Standon?"

"The man my mother goes with."

"Oh, come now..." And Miss Williams, colouring a little, felt the ice
getting thin even under her own experienced feet. (But not, perhaps, so
experienced in certain directions.) She added hastily: "Livia... I think we
had better not discuss this any further for the present. And I'm not sure
whether you ought to go home now or wait till the end of term. I'll think it
over and let you know in a few days."

Miss Williams planned to write Mrs. Channing a long letter of explanation
which would arrive ahead of Livia; but this intention was frustrated by a
much simpler act by the girl herself. She ran away from the school that same
evening, taking nobody into her confidence, but leaving for Miss Williams a
note in which there was, perhaps, just a whiff of histrionics:

"DEAR MISS WILLIAMS—I am going home, and since you
think I am a thief, I have stolen money for the fare from Joan Martin's
locker. I took a pound. Please give it back to her out of my bank-money.
—OLIVIA."

The note was not discovered till the next morning, by which time Livia
would have reached home. All Miss Williams could do, and with great luck, was
to replace the pound before the loss of that was discovered also. She knew
Joan was Livia's best friend and would willingly have lent the money had she
been asked... A strange girl, Livia—perhaps not a bad girl; but still,
it was just as well not to have her back at Cheldean.

* * * * *

Livia reached Browdley before six o'clock on a windy March
morning.
Throughout the night-long train journey she had thought out the things she
would immediately ask her mother; she wanted to know ALL the secrets, all the
details that Miss Williams had not told because she probably had not known
them herself. The list of these was mountainous by the time the cab came
within sight of Stoneclough, grey and ghostly in the first light of dawn. In
the yard beside the stables she was startled to see a new motorcar, with her
mother in the driver's seat and Mr. Standon hastily stowing bags into the
back.

"Livia! LIVIA! What on earth are you doing here?"

As her mother spoke Livia noted the exchange of glances between her and
Mr. Standon. The latter dropped the bags and came over with a smile of rather
weary astonishment. He was a very elegant young man, but he did not look his
best at six in the morning; and he had, indeed, received so many
astonishments during the past twelve hours that he felt incapable of
responding to any more. "Hello, Livia," he remarked; it was all he could
think of to say.

Livia ignored him. "Mother—I've left Cheldean—I've run
away—I'm never going back there—and I want to talk to you
—I've got things to ask you—"

"But Livia... not now... oh, not now..." And a look of panic came over
Emily's face as she turned again to Mr. Standon. "Lawrence, DO make haste...
we can't stop because of—because of ANYTHING..." Then: "We've—
that is, dear—your mother's in a hurry—"

Livia knew from experience that Emily always called herself 'your mother'
to put distance between herself and the facing of any issue; it was like a
shield behind which she could retire from a battlefield before the battle had
begun.

"Mother, you CAN'T go away yet. I've got most important things to talk to
you about... ALONE."

"No, no, dear... Lawrence, put those bags in and let's be off... If you've
got into any trouble at Cheldean, don't worry... Mother will write to Miss
Williams and have it all put right."

"It isn't that, mother... Mother, PLEASE—please will you come into
the house and let me talk to you for a while."

"Darling, I can't—I just CAN'T—"

But this was too much even for Mr. Standon. "Perhaps you'd better, Emily,"
he advised. "You can't let her go in without—without—" And the
look between them was exchanged again.

Emily slowly climbed out of the car, her face pale and distraught. She
walked with Livia a few paces towards the side door leading through the
kitchen into the house. They did not speak, but from the doorstep Emily gave
one despairing look over her shoulder towards Mr. Standon, as if scared of
going out of his sight. Then suddenly and hysterically she cried out:
"Lawrence, I can't tell her—I can't, I CAN'T... YOU'LL have to."
Whereupon she ran back to the car and with almost absurd alacrity jumped in
and drove off, leaving him to shout after her in vain and to turn to Livia
with the faintest possible shrug.

"Your mother's upset," he remarked mildly; and then, detaining her as she
stepped towards the house: "I wouldn't go in yet if I were you. Let's have a
little chat first."

"You don't have to. I know. And I don't think it's any of my
business."

Mr. Standon looked nonplussed for a moment, then shifted uncomfortably.
"That isn't what I... er... well, what I DO mean IS your business. It's about
your father."

He draped his hand over her shoulder at that word, as if to lessen the
shock, but the fact that there was none made him so uncomfortable that he
took away his hand before Livia could reply: "I know about that too. Miss
Williams told me. He's not dead as my mother always said. He's in a
prison."

Mr. Standon gulped hard. "No... Not any more."

This time there WAS a shock, perceptible but well-controlled; the girl
looked up at him enquiringly. "You mean he IS dead now? He's died?"

"No, Livia. He's—he's been released. And—he's here—
now—in the house. He got here a few days ago."

"But... but... my mother... why...?"

"I can't explain all that."

She stared at him, incredulously, and while she did, the sound of a
motor-horn echoed from the road down below.

He said hastily: "I'm sorry, Livia, but you see... well, that's how it
is."

The horn sounded again, peremptorily. Mr. Standon fidgeted as he went on:
"Perhaps you'd like to come along..."

"Come along? Where? With you?"

"Not with me, exactly—with your mother. I'm sure that would be all
right—"

"But with YOU?"

"Well... only in case... in case you wanted to be with HER."

"But where's she going? When is she coming back? Why must she go away at
all?"

"Livia, it's no use asking me these questions. If you want to walk down
the road and talk to her about it, come with me now."

"With YOU?"

And the horn sounded a third time, causing Standon to exclaim, under his
breath: "Damnation, she shouldn't have run off like this..."

Livia added quietly: "I don't want to go anywhere with you."

"Well, then... I'm afraid that settles it." He walked a few steps away,
then turned again for a last appeal. "But what are you going to DO?"

She was moving towards the door. He continued, for he was not an entirely
insensitive young man: "Livia, you WANT to see him? You're SURE of that?"

"Where is he? Is he in bed?"

"No... he's been up all night. That's why, if you'd like to think things
over first..."

"What is there to think over? Anything ELSE?"

The question was so direct, yet so free from irony, that he could only
reply: "Maybe I'd better come in with you and—and—er—" It
sounded idiotic to say 'introduce you', but for the life of him he could not
think of another way to finish the sentence.

"No, I'll know where to go."

"In the drawing-room, I think. That's where he was."

Livia then went in without another word, while Mr. Standon, after staring
at her retreating figure for a moment, slowly lit a cigarette and began to
walk down the drive-way towards the road, quickening his pace when he heard
the horn a fourth time. He still felt extremely uncomfortable.

* * * * *

The lights throughout the house were unlit, but a
flickering glow, as of
firelight, showed beneath the drawing-room door where the carpet had worn;
everything else was dark, except the high window at the end of the corridor,
which showed the dawn in a grey oblong, Livia turned the door-handle and
entered. Her eyes were dazzled at first by the firelight, but she was somehow
aware of a person in the room.

"I can't SEE you," she said—the first words she ever spoke to
him.

She saw then a tall shape striding across the floor to the light- switch;
next she saw his shoulders, a little stooping; then, when he turned, all such
details as his grey thinning hair, wide forehead, and odd smile merged into a
general first impression that he was TIRED.

"Livia, isn't it?"

"Hello," she answered; and they shook hands.

When one is young, everything has a stereoscopic clarity, even if it is
not properly understood; no hoard of experience both makes and compensates
for a blurred background. To Livia as she shook hands with the stranger who
was her father, it seemed that her life hinged in a new direction,
terrifyingly new, puzzling, even shattering, yet somehow not to be feared.
But for the moment she thought her mind would break with such a mixture of
emotions as she began to feel: angry love for her mother, cold dislike for
Mr. Standon, and a growing shock over the entire situation, as if her
physical existence were coming out of numbness. I shall never be the same
again, because NOTHING can ever be the same again, and I am not NOTHING
—she reflected suddenly, remembering the first lesson in logic that had
been almost the last thing she learned at Cheldean. But the frantic syllogism
comforted her, all the more because it had not occurred to her till just that
moment; and as she stared from the firelight to the tired face of the man
standing before her, she repeated it to herself: Whatever happens, whatever
they do to me, however much I am torn apart, I AM NOT NOTHING.

She saw that he was still smiling, waiting perhaps for her to speak. She
wondered how long she had been silent—minutes or only seconds? But the
words could come now; she began abruptly: "Are you hungry? I am."

He answered: "Not very. But don't let me stop you—"

"Wouldn't you even like a cup of tea?"

"Well... er... hadn't we better wait till Sarah—"

"Oh, I'll make it. Let's go into the kitchen."

"All right."

She made not only a cup of tea, but a substantial meal of eggs and bacon,
which they both ate, talking of nothing in particular meanwhile—just
the weather, and the sharp frost that morning, and how they liked their eggs
done. It was beginning to be easier now—like the first morning of term
when you go into a new class with a new teacher, and you do not exactly
expect to get on with her at first—in fact you pine for the old one all
the time, though you would not, if the choice were given, stay down in the
lower class just to escape the trials of newness.

When he lit a pipe she commented: "They said you never used to smoke."

He did not ask who 'they' were, or why the matter should ever have been
mentioned. He answered lightly: "Oh yes, I have most bad habits."

"You mean you drink too?"

"Well... I HAVE been known to touch a drop."

She laughed, because the phrase 'touch a drop' had amused her when she was
a child; it was so funny to touch a drop, if you ever went to the trouble of
doing it, and she had often in those days puzzled over why old Mr. Felsby
should boast so much about never having done it in his life.

He smiled again. "Don't worry—I never did drink at breakfast. For
that matter, I never drank much at any time. Not to excess, that is."

"Then it's not a bad habit."

"All right—so long as you don't think too well of me."

They talked on, as unimportantly as that. She did not ask him any direct
questions, nor he her, but by the time the first rays of sunshine poured in
through the kitchen window they knew a few things about each other—
such as, for instance, that they had both arrived at Stoneclough before their
time—she from school, having run away, he from prison, having been
released a few months earlier than he had counted on, owing to a technicality
in the reckoning. She gathered also that his arrival had led to other events
in which her mother and Mr. Standon were involved. He did not tell her much
about that, but he said it was an odd coincidence that she should have come
that morning, an odd and perhaps an awkward one, but not so awkward as if she
had come a few hours sooner.

"I don't know why she didn't tell me everything before," he added, as if
thinking aloud. "It would have been all right. I wouldn't have blamed her...
I don't blame her now, for that matter. She just couldn't face facts—
never could... Oh, well, give me another cup of tea."

While Livia did so he puffed at his pipe and went on:

"Things never turn out quite how you expect, do they?"

She knew that he was addressing her as an adult, either deliberately or
absent-mindedly, and in order not to break the spell she said nothing in
reply. But he relapsed into silence, and presently, still under the spell
herself, she said brightly: "Don't I make good tea?"

He seemed to wake himself up. "You certainly do." Then he yawned. "VERY
good."

"I expect you're tired."

"Yes. Dead tired. I was up all night."

"So was I—in the train."

"Perhaps we'd both better get some sleep."

She nodded. "Sarah knows you're here, of course?"

"Oh yes. AND Miss Fortescue AND Watson. We'll meet at dinner, then."

He walked out of the kitchen and a few seconds later she heard him
climbing the stairs. It was odd to reflect that he knew his way about the
house.

She slept soundly most of the day and was wakened during the afternoon by
the sound of commotion in the yard. When she ran to the window, with almost
every possibility in mind, she saw it was only Miss Fortescue driving off in
a cab. Somehow it did not seem to matter what Miss Fortescue did, but it gave
her something to begin the conversation with when she went down to the
dinner-table that evening.

"She left," he said, "because the whole situation was revolting to her
sensibilities."

Again he was talking to her as to an adult; and she knew what he meant, if
not all the individual words. Throughout the rest of the meal he veered
between more trivial gossip and silence, but when Sarah had left the room for
good he said: "I don't know what your plans are, Livia..."

"PLANS? I haven't any."

"I mean—what are you going to do?"

"I'm not going to go back to Cheldean."

"Well..." And he began to light his pipe. "Some other school,
perhaps?"

"You mean you don't WANT me here?"

"Livia... it isn't that. It hasn't much to do with what I want. Let's not
discuss it yet, though. All kinds of things can happen."

Which was the kind of world that Livia dreamed of—one in which all
kinds of things could happen.

She said cheerfully: "The school holidays begin next week, so I'd have
been here soon anyway."

He smiled. "Naturally... and—er—while you ARE here, there's
another thing... you mustn't feel you have to entertain me. I don't want to
interrupt any of your habits... What do you usually do after dinner?"

"Sometimes I take a walk in the garden, but I think it's already begun to
rain. Sometimes I read, or play records."

"Then please do just what you like—as usual."

Without another word she went to the gramophone and put on Mozart; after
it finished she closed the instrument and called from the doorway: "Good
night." When he gave no answer she went back to his chair and saw that he was
asleep, so she took the warm pipe out of his hand in case it set fire to
something; then she laid another cob of coal on the reddened embers in the
grate.

It was all very easy the next morning, so far as Livia was concerned. But
as the day proceeded it became clear that other people were bent on making
difficulties. First there arrived Richard Felsby, and a somewhat stormy scene
took place from which Livia was excluded, though she tried to listen at the
door and gathered that the old man was just as shocked as Miss Fortescue. She
was also vaguely aware that matters of importance were being arranged over
her head, and decided there and then to insert her own personal clause into
whatever plans were being concocted. And that was simply that she would not,
in any circumstances, go back to Cheldean. As soon as the chance came she
reiterated this. "And if you send me," she added, "I'll run away again."
Neither she nor her father knew that Miss Williams would not have had her
back in any event; it would have saved them an argument. "Very well," he said
at length, "I'll see about somewhere else." But it was already too late for
the girl to begin the new term at any other school.

And the sensation of John Channing's return, combined with the scandal of
Emily Channing's departure, raged like a hurricane through Browdley and
neighbourhood for several weeks, then slowly sank to the dimensions of a
zephyr.

* * * * *

They became good friends. It was not that Livia liked him
instantly, still
less was she aware of any submerged filial emotions, nor was there any
conscious effort to like him; but a moment came, quite a casual one, when she
realized that she had already been liking him a good deal for some time.

She did not call him 'father'. It was hard to begin, and since she did not
begin soon enough, it became impossible to begin. Eventually, since she had
to call him something, she asked if he would mind 'Martin'.

"MARTIN? Why Martin?"

"I like the name. I used to have a friend at school called Martin... Joan
Martin."

"Used to have? It's not so long ago." He was rather relieved to find she
had had a friend, after what Dr. Whiteside had said when they met a few days
before. "Don't you keep in touch with her?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because she thinks I stole her watch."

The answer was devastating, and out of it came the story of the Cheldean
incident. After she had given him the somewhat curious details he said
quizzically: "And did you?"

"Good heavens, no—what do you think I am?"

"Well, what do you think I am?"

She pondered gravely for a moment, whereupon he laughed, not because there
was anything to laugh at, but because he had at last found a way of
introducing a matter which he wanted to clear up once and for all. "You see,
Livia, I don't wish you to get any false ideas. Don't think up excuses for
me. Don't dramatize me innocent, for instance, as you dramatized yourself
guilty... On the other hand—don't believe everything you read about me
in the papers... Know what I mean?"

She nodded and he knew she did.

She added hastily: "I must tell you something else though... I didn't
steal her watch, but I did steal her money afterwards."

"WHAT?"

Then more explanations. He finally laughed again and said: "That's all
right. Perhaps we're neither of us quite as bad as we're painted—or as
good as we ought to be. And I still think you ought to keep in touch with
Joan. Mustn't centre yourself on Stoneclough altogether... Get out more. Meet
people. What did you think of doing this afternoon, for instance?"

"Nothing in particular."

"There's a farm sale I'm going to. Watson said he wanted more tools for
the garden and I thought I might pick up a few bargains... Come with me if
you like."

"Oh yes, Martin... I CAN call you that? You don't mind?"

"Not a bit... On the contrary, you've settled what name I'll give if I bid
for anything."

It wasn't only his name, however, so far as Browdley itself was concerned.
He was recognized by many in the town, despite the long interval, and one
day, after he had called on Dr. Whiteside at his house in Shawgate, a
stranger accosted him in the street and made offensive remarks. After that he
never visited Browdley again, but in the other direction, at a somewhat
greater distance, lay country towns and villages where no one knew him by
sight; and here he liked to take Livia with him on casual expeditions—
to that farm sale, for instance (at which he bought some spades and hoes, and
quietly said 'Martin' to the auctioneer); or on other occasions to an
agricultural show, or a cricket match, or a local fair. He liked outdoor
scenes and functions—the smell of moist, well- trodden earth, the hum
of rural voices blown full and then faint on a veering wind, the pageantry of
flags and bunting against low- scudding clouds. Frankly he did not much care
whether Livia enjoyed every moment of these occasions or not; she took the
chance when she agreed to accompany him, and if she were bored, that was her
look-out. Sometimes she admitted afterwards that she had been. "But I don't
MIND being bored with you, Martin." To which she added quickly: "I mean I
don't mind being bored when I'm with you... no, no, not even THAT exactly
—what I REALLY mean is, I don't mind being bored PROVIDED I'm with
you."

* * * * *

Of the schools to which he wrote, all declared they had no
vacancies.
Whether they had received unsatisfactory reports from Miss Williams, or
whether the newspaper scandal had scared them off, was hard to determine;
they gave no such reasons, of course, but after the same kind of letter had
arrived from half a dozen headmistresses he felt there was not much use
continuing. Perhaps there were schools in France or Switzerland; he would
have to look the matter up. He did not tell Livia of his lack of success so
far, preferring her to think he had merely dropped the matter; which she did,
without much delay and with great satisfaction.

For it was very pleasant to be at Stoneclough as the seasons rounded and
another spring brought new green to the trees. After the battles and scandals
of the previous year, peace seemed to have descended on the house and its
occupants; even Sarah, shrill-voiced as she shared the domestic work with
Livia, nagged less if only for the prosaic reason that she was getting deaf
and could hear less. She too had made her truce, whether of God or of the
Devil; without giving up one jot of her religious scruples, which were of the
strictest kind, she nevertheless contrived to mate them with an old
conviction that a Channing could do no wrong. He could, and had done,
obviously; and yet, in another sense, it was not so. Surely that was no
harder to believe than some of the things she heard, and with relish, from
her favourite pulpit every Sunday? She was a devout attender at one of the
Browdley Methodist chapels, where, as deafness slowly gained on
unobtrusiveness over a period of years, she had worked her way up to the
front pew immediately beneath the preacher's oratory. She liked the preacher
in a grim, prim way—the same way that she liked Mr. Felsby. She had
never liked Emily, or Miss Fortescue, or Watson, or anyone at Stoneclough who
was not a Channing. And she only half-liked Livia, who was only half a
Channing. Livia wrangled with her, tolerated her, and thought her at times
insufferable—which she was. She was also stupid, hard- working, not
very clean, and intensely loyal.

Whereas Watson was not so loyal, rather lazy, and occasionally drunk. But
he had a knack with plants and machines, and an affection for the place he
worked at rather than for the people he worked for. He liked his employer
well enough, did not much care for Livia, whom he thought arrogant, and hated
Sarah, who had once floored him with a saucepan when he came into her kitchen
tipsy.

And yet, out of these strains and stresses, a queer equilibrium emerged
—a tideless sea in which all the storms were in teacups. It was
Browdley, that almost foreign land five miles away, where rancours increased
as trade worsened and mill after mill closed down. Even Mr. Felsby was
rumoured to be losing a small part of his fortune; one could not be sure,
however, since he forbore to come up the hill and grumble about it. And Dr.
Whiteside, his closest friend, gradually absented himself also, though he was
cordial enough with Livia when they met, as they sometimes did, in the
streets of the town.

Livia shopped, kept house, and helped with the cooking; while Martin
(since he may as well be called that) spent hours in the garden, turning
waste land into vegetable patches, thinning trees, repairing terraces and
fences. There was much to be done after so many years of Watson's neglect and
Emily's indifference.

One day he told her she was to go to a school in Switzerland, and that she
would like it very much because Geneva was a very beautiful city. Livia was
surprised and disappointed; she had hoped that the whole idea of school might
be dropped, but of course it was quite exciting to be going abroad for the
first time, and doubtless a Swiss school would be nothing like Cheldean. So
there followed a great scurry of preparation—travel tickets had to be
obtained, clothes to be bought, and the old Cheldean trunk taken down from
the attic over the stables. Martin, who had visited Geneva in his youth, told
her what she would see and what she must on no account miss, and that part of
the value of being at a foreign school was merely to be living in a foreign
country.

Livia was to leave by a night train on the Wednesday after Easter week.
During the afternoon she had some last-minute shopping in Browdley, and
returned towards dusk in the rather shabby old car that Martin had picked up
at a bargain price and that only Watson's constant attention kept in going
order. The trunk was in the hall, roped and labelled; it was understood that
there would be early dinner while Watson loaded up the car for the drive to
the station. Livia, excited in a way she could not exactly diagnose, walked
into the drawing-room where she found Martin standing in front of the
fireplace reading the paper. There was nothing odd in that, but when he put
the paper aside to talk to her, Livia was transfixed by the sight of tears in
his eyes.

The conclusion she reached was inescapable.

"Oh, Martin, Martin—what's the matter? If you don't want me to go, I
won't. I don't really care about Geneva or Switzerland or any place except
here! I'd RATHER stay with you, Martin—"

"Come here," he interrupted. And then he stepped towards the girl and took
her arm with a curious nervous pressure. "It isn't THAT..."

"Martin—what's happened?"

He picked up the paper, folded it to a certain place, and handed it to
her. But she did not look at it; she kept staring at him till he had to say:
"I'm afraid it's bad news... Or would you rather have me tell you?"

She looked at the paper then. It was a small paragraph on an inside page,
reporting that Mrs. John Channing had been killed instantly when the car she
was driving overturned on the road between Chartres and Orleans, and that a
Mr. Standon, who was a passenger, had been severely injured. The reading
public was further reminded that Mrs. John Channing was the wife of the same
John Channing who, etc. etc.

Livia did not speak. She read the paragraph over and over, trying to grasp
not only what it meant, but what it signified in her own life; and then,
because of the tears in Martin's eyes, she began to weep herself. "Oh,
mother... MOTHER..." she sobbed. But even while she did so a thought came to
her in such a guise that she felt dreadful for having the kind of mind in
which it could even exist—the thought that in his distress, which was
also hers, Martin might now want her to stay at Stoneclough for company's
sake. Yet how could one help one's thoughts, whatever they were? And she WAS
distressed; her tears, imitative at first, were perfectly genuine as they
proceeded. But she knew now, for certain, how much she wanted not to leave
Stoneclough, and that all the excitement of packing to go abroad would be
nothing to the quiet relief, even the sad relief, of unpacking.

But it was not to be. As soon as she hinted at it, he said no; if the news
had upset her very much she could postpone departure for a day or two, but
that was all; and really, he thought it best for her to go; the change of
scene and new companions would prove a great help, he assured her.

"And it wouldn't help YOU, Martin, if I stayed?"

He half smiled. "That's very kind of you, my dear, but I really don't
think it would."

After that she was proud enough to leave that night, as had been planned,
and not accept the short delay that was so pitiable a substitute for what she
had hoped.

But she was not long away from Stoneclough. The time was April, 1914; she
had one term at the Geneva school, then returned to England for the summer
holidays just before war broke out. And when the next term began, in
September, the Germans were on the Marne and it was thought inadvisable to
send English girls across France, even to the best Swiss
finishing-schools.

* * * * *

One day, to escape a heavy shower, Livia entered the
Browdley Public
Library, and by sheer chance as she wandered in and out of the alcoves, came
upon a section dealing with law cases and jurisprudence; one of the books,
conspicuous by its worn condition, proved to be a verbatim report of the
Channing case. The name was a shock that set her heart beating, but a greater
one came when she opened the book and found, against the title-page, a
photograph of her father as he had been at the time of the trial all those
years before. So young, so handsome, so dashing; she could hardly believe it
was the same man... and against the photograph, scrawled in pencil, was a
word unknown to her, but which she guessed to be foul. It brought a flush to
her face that she thought everyone in the library must notice, but no one
did, and with a curious hypnotized fascination she took the book to a
secluded table and began to read carefully. Later, when she had to leave, she
hid it behind some other books, so that nobody should borrow it before she
continued reading the next day. Not being a library member she could not
borrow it herself, nor did she want to order a copy from a bookseller. But
every afternoon for a week she spent an hour or two in the library alcove,
trying to understand the crime that her father had committed. And for the
most part she was mystified. It was all to do with another world—a
world of complicated details and strange jargon—false estimates of
reserves, duplicated stock certificates, and so on. What puzzled her was the
intention behind it all, and to this she found no positive clue until she
came to the defending counsel's speech, in which her father was portrayed as
a brilliant visionary who had wished to amalgamate a large group of cotton
mills with a view to preventing their eventual bankruptcies as separate
competitors. But then, when she came to the judge's summing-up, the whole
picture was different—that of an ambitious, unscrupulous adventurer,
greedy for power, employing deliberate deceit to tempt unwary investors...
The two pictures made the problem harder than ever, the more so as neither
bore the slightest resemblance to the man she herself knew. She then re-read
the examinations and cross-examinations, seeking to disentangle some
corroboration of one or other viewpoint out of the mass of opposite and
bewildering evidence. The main thing she gathered was that her father had
once been in a position to deal with vast sums of money, whereas now he could
hardly afford the extra hundred pounds by which the taxes on Stoneclough had
lately been increased.

Some day, she thought, he would tell her all about it; and then he would
be surprised to find out how much she knew already. But what DID she know?
The chief clue was missing... WHY had he done whatever it was that he had
done? Not only why had he defrauded people, for that question had already
been given two conflicting answers, but why had he been either the adventurer
greedy for power, or the visionary with dreams of reorganizing an industry?
Why? For it had been stated over and over again during the trial, as if it
were against him, that the Channing Mill itself was sound until his own
course of action ruined it; everything would have been all right, therefore,
if he had let things alone. Only he hadn't let things alone.

And then, too, she realized with a sense of discovery, though it was
obvious by simple arithmetic, that he had spent many years in the industrial
and financial world before the crash. His career was referred to at the trial
as having been an 'honourable' one; distinguished connections were cited with
a number of companies besides his own. Why, then, had he suddenly broken
whatever were the rules of the game?

There was yet a third character-reading, scattered throughout the book in
sundry pencilled remarks. "Liar", "Thief", "Swindler", were among the mildest
of them; but on the last page was a clue, if not to her father's motives, at
any rate to his anonymous accuser's. For in the margin alongside the judge's
pronouncement of sentence was the scribbled comment: "And not half what the
—deserved for ruining me and hundreds more."

Long after she had finished the book and had learned all she could from it
she found that even passing the library gave her an itch of curiosity—
was it still being read, was some other unknown borrower adding new pencilled
insults to the printed lines? She would sometimes dash into the building just
to see, and one day she reflected how simple it would be to put the book
under her coat and take it away as she walked out. But she could not make up
her mind to do this. It was no question of the morals of stealing, or of risk
in being discovered, but rather of her personal attitude towards Browdley: to
remove the book would somehow be accepting defeat, whereas to leave it was
—if not victory—at least a challenge and a defiance. So she left
it, and the library took on a curious significance in her mind: the place
where the book was, and where people went who hated Martin.

* * * * *

He never spoke to her about the past, or gave her any
opening to ask him
direct questions about it; but sometimes, apropos of other things, he made
remarks that connected themselves with it in her mind—remarks that did
not so much reveal the light as illumine the darkness. Once he said: "The
hardest thing in the world is to understand how you were once interested in
something that no longer interests you at all." And another time, standing
with her in the garden on one of those rare clear days when all Browdley
could be seen in the distance, he said: "The factories look big, don't they?
They dominate the town like the cathedrals at Cologne or Amiens... perhaps
they ARE cathedrals, in a way, if enough people believe in them." And then he
mentioned a lecture by a young fellow named Boswell who was trying to get on
the Browdley Council—a lecture Richard Felsby had told him about in
great indignation because it had blamed the Channing and Felsby families for
much that was wrong about the state of Browdley. "There's some truth in it,
though. Whenever I think of those rows and rows of drab streets huddling
under the cathedrals I have the feeling that if somebody were to send me to
jail for THAT, I'd consider it a just sentence... We're all guilty, Livia, of
everything that happens. Read the papers and see how." (It was the autumn of
1917, the blackest time of the war.) "And if guilt had to be paid for by
punishment, then the earth would be one vast prison. Perhaps that's what it
is."

"The animals would have a good time if everybody was in prison," Livia
commented cheerfully. "THEY aren't guilty, anyhow. In fact they don't know
anything about our wars and peaces—how can they? What does it matter to
a worm whether he gets cut in half by a garden spade or by a shell
bursting?"

He smiled. "It would certainly be hard to convince him of the difference.
Probably about as hard as to explain to Man the mind of God." He turned with
her into the clough. "By the way, I'm going to London for a few days.
Anything you'd like me to get for you there?"

"Can't I come with you?"

"Wouldn't be much fun for you. It's—it's mostly a business
trip."

"You mean—you're going to—to start doing financial things
again?" That was the nearest she ever came to a direct question.

"Good God, no. Don't you think I had enough?" That was the nearest he ever
came to a direct answer.

* * * * *

While he was gone she realized she was enjoying even the
loneliness,
because of the image of his return. That image hovered over the edge of every
page of every book she turned to, was called to life by every loved
gramophone record. Her eighteenth birthday came during his absence, and
somehow she was not even disappointed that he had chosen to be away at such a
time; maybe he had had no choice; there were still many things in his life of
which she knew nothing. The long interval of the prison years, for instance.
He never even hinted at them, yet—she argued—what else could have
caused the disconnection between the kind of person he had been and the kind
he now was? Some day, perhaps, he would tell her about that also. Some day,
when she was old enough, he would think of her as a complete adult, within
range of every possible adult confidence. She already felt she was, however
little it might have occurred to him so far. She was also beginning to
appraise herself physically, though without vanity, for she considered her
body too small and her mouth too big; but in being thus ruthless she was
merely, of course, denying herself what she did not want. She knew no boys or
young men, and when sometimes in Browdley they would stare at her as if she
attracted them, she herself was aware only of disinterest. She did not want
—was sure she would never want—to attract anyone that way. There
were other ways for which she felt herself far better equipped; she liked to
think there was something rare and talismanic about her that could appeal to
an older man.

Yet she must not dramatize; he had once cautioned her about that, and ever
afterwards she had known she had better not act before him; and this, by a
subtle transition, meant that she need not act before him, thus (if she chose
to look at it that way) relieving her of a burden rather than imposing on her
a restriction. It was pleasant, anyhow, to think of the future that stretched
ahead; she and Martin at Stoneclough, pottering about the garden, taking
walks in the clough and on the moorland, visiting places together—the
eventless days, the long firelit evenings. And, of course, to complete such
felicity, the war would end sometime.

Sarah, growing deafer and more asthmatic in her old age, seized the chance
of Martin's absence to urge her to 'get out' oftener, to make friends with
young people, to enjoy herself more. And this, from Sarah, who had always
connected 'enjoyment' with the Devil, was an amazing suggestion if Livia had
been interested enough to think about it.

But she merely replied, off-handedly as she always did to Sarah: "I DO
enjoy myself. I'm perfectly happy."

"It's a pity you gave up school," said Sarah.

"Well, I never enjoyed myself much there, anyhow. And besides, I didn't
give it up—the school gave me up. Didn't you know that? I was
practically expelled, and then other schools wouldn't have me—Martin
didn't tell me that, but I once saw some letters on his desk saying they
couldn't take me... I knew why even if HE didn't... You see, I'm a bad
lot—like father, like daughter—isn't that rather natural?"

She knew, of course, that she was acting then; she was always ready to do
so in order to shock old Sarah.

* * * * *

When Martin came back she had been waiting for him for
hours, but without
urgency. Snow had fallen during the day, and this presumably had made his
train late. It had also covered the drive as far as the road so thickly that
Watson could not clear it in time to take the car to the station; so Martin
would doubtless arrive by taxi. Earlier in the evening she had put on
galoshes to enjoy the garden, where the snow lay piled in knee-high drifts
—a rare enough sight to be novel, and so were the white slopes of the
clough, through which the path ran untraceably except to one as familiar with
it as she. The sky was blue-black and full of stars; they and the snow made a
paleness bright enough to read by. And all around, especially when she
listened for any car noise, there was a great blanket of silence that seemed
to follow her into the house when she re-entered.

He arrived about ten o'clock, having walked the last mile along the road
because the taxi couldn't get any further.

"And with those thin shoes, Martin? You must be soaking wet... And
carrying that bag all the way..."

"It's not heavy. I'll go up and change immediately."

"Let me carry it for you."

"No, no... I'm all right. If I want anything I'll ring for Sarah."

"She's got a bad cough and went to bed hours ago."

"All right... I won't want anything."

By the time he came down she had the drawing-room fire roaring high, and a
tray of refreshments by the side of his favourite armchair—hot soup,
sandwiches, whisky and soda.

"Nice of you, Livia, but really and truly I don't want anything—
except the fire."

The way he said that made her instantly begin to do so. She noticed how
more than usually tired he looked, his whole face drawn a little, hands
trembling as he held them to the fire.

"When you were so late I wondered if perhaps you weren't coming back till
tomorrow."

"No... it was just the weather."

"I thought perhaps your business had taken longer than you expected."

"No... there wasn't much business." His face lightened as he added: "I
didn't forget your birthday, but—I have an awful confession—I
left what I bought you in the train. They were some special records— of
Mozart. I knew you'd like them. I don't know how I could have been so stupid,
but it's quite possible they'll be turned in by the finder. Unless he's so
disappointed when he unwraps the parcel that he smashes them in disgust."

"Oh no—NOBODY could deliberately smash Mozart records!"

He smiled. "Maybe not. Anyhow, I left word about it—and if we don't
get them back I'll buy you some more."

"Martin... I'm so sorry... don't worry about it."

"Who said I was worrying about it?"

"Well, you're worrying about something—I can see from your
face."

"I told YOU not to worry."

Suddenly, leaning forward to warm his hands, he slipped and fell to his
knees. Only her nearness and quickness saved him; another few inches, another
second, and he would have been burned. As it was, she managed to pull him
back and saw then that it had been more than a slip, more than just
tiredness. She was calm, yet uncertain what to do—call Sarah?—
call a doctor?—but first, anyhow, there was the whisky. She forced a
stiff drink between his lips, then began loosening his collar. While she was
doing this his eyes re- focussed themselves.

"I think you fainted, Martin."

He nodded, gulping over the taste of the whisky.

"Seems so... and by the way, I shouldn't have had that."

"Why not? It pulled you round."

"Maybe... only I'm not supposed to have it—now."

"Why NOW?"

"Well, any time for that matter."

"You said NOW! Martin, what's wrong? What's happened? Are you ill?...
Shall I call a doctor?"

He shook his head. "No, I've had a doctor. That's really what I went to
London for. It's nothing you need worry about... But perhaps I'd better go to
bed now—and rest. I ASSURE you it's nothing you need worry about...
It's—er—to do with my eyes. I've known for some time they weren't
quite as they should be. Old Whiteside diagnosed it wrong, of course... Well,
anyhow, let's hope those records turn up. At least I can HEAR properly."

He got up and walked to the door, while she ran past him to open it.

"Martin..."

"I'm really all right, Livia—I didn't even intend to tell you but
for—"

"Martin, I'LL look after you. You know that?"

"Why, yes, but—"

"Even if you were to go blind—"

"Oh, come now, there's no question of that..." And then a laugh. "You DO
like to dramatize, don't you?... But you're very kind. I sometimes wonder
why. I never did anything for you—except bring you into the world, and
God knows whether you'll thank me for that, in the end... Yes, it puzzles me
sometimes—why you are so kind to me."

"Because I love you," she answered simply, and then she laughed too, as if
to join him in any joke there was. "Good night, Martin."

"Good night."

Back in the drawing-room she listened to his footsteps creaking on the
floor above. Then she ate a sandwich and walked to the window, opened it, and
breathed the cold air. The blanket of silence was still covering the
world.

* * * * *

The next morning he asked her not to tell Sarah anything
about his
fainting, or the trouble he had mentioned, because Sarah would fuss, and
fussing was just as bad as worrying. And it was useless to tell Sarah not to
fuss, because she would do so anyway; whereas if he told Livia not to worry,
then he was sure of her compliance. Livia said she was far too happy to worry
about anything, which was the truth, and it puzzled her. Perhaps it was
because he looked so much better after his night's sleep. Or perhaps it was
just that he was home again. Or perhaps it was her own penchant for having
the oddest emotions at the oddest times.

Anyhow, she was so happy she decided to put the old work-horse between the
shafts of the garden cart and drive over the hill to fetch eggs and butter
from one of the farms; Watson usually did this in the car, but he was afraid
the snow might be too deep in places, though the horse would manage all
right. So she sat on the plank seat, surrounded by the rich smells of the
empty cart, and jogged down the road as far as the side turning that climbed
again steeply to the moorland. The sky over the snow was an incredible deep
blue, and when she had gone a little way and looked back, there was
Stoneclough, a huddle of white roofs against the black- and-white trees. And
above her now, the mountain lifted up. In that strange snow-blue light it
seemed to her that she had never been so near it before, though actually she
had climbed to the summit many times; she felt a sudden wild ecstasy that
made her lie down on the floor of the cart amidst the smells of hay and
manure, to exult in the whole matchless beauty of that moment. The horse
jogged on, presently stopping before a closed gate. She jumped down to open
it, laughing aloud. Then the lane narrowed to a stony track, and there were
other gates. At last she reached a farmhouse and saw a fat woman standing at
the doorway wiping her arms on an apron and smiling. "Laws amussy," she
cried, as Livia approached, "I didn't expect anybody'd come up this morning.
Are you from Stoneclough?"

Livia said she was, and had the impression she was being taken for a
servant girl; and that, somehow, added to the pleasantness of the occasion.
Smiling also, she handed over the note on which Sarah had written out so much
butter, so many eggs, and so on; but then another strange and pleasant thing
happened. The fat woman pushed back the note with a loud chuckle. "Nay,
that's no use to me, girl—ye'll have to tell me what it says. I never
was a scholar."

"You mean you can't READ?" queried Livia.

"That's so—and I don't know as I'll ever bother to learn, now I've
let it go so long."

Livia then told her what she wanted, whereupon the woman disappeared into
the farmhouse, returning after a few minutes with the various items, a
handful of carrots for the horse, and a jug containing a pale frothing
liquid. "Nettle-drink," she cried triumphantly, "and it'll be the best ye've
ever tasted."

That could be easy, thought Livia, who had never tasted any before. But it
WAS delicious, whether because of the woman's special brew, or for some
curious extra congeniality of time and place... but the truth was, everything
that morning was to Livia miraculously right—the drive, the sky, the
sunshine, the mountain, the nettle- drink, and the fact that the woman could
not read. Never again, as long as she lived, was she quite so happy.

* * * * *

She would hold his arm firmly (for he was apt to stumble a
little), and
walk with him up and down the level paths along the terraces, sometimes as
far as the fence, but not much beyond, because there might be strangers in
the clough, and he did not want to be seen. All at once a secret between them
was removed, so far as this was concerned; he made no more effort to conceal
from her certain things that he still wished to conceal from others. She was
a co- conspirator in a small but necessary deception. For some reason he did
not want outsiders to know that his eyes were bad; he seemed not to realize
that few would care, or even think that a man walking slowly along with a
girl holding his arm was behaving in any abnormal way for father with
daughter. But she did not mind the pretence, if it satisfied him. And inside
the garden, with no one to see or hear, with the empty moorland above and the
dark clough below, she learned the special trick of sharing whatever mood he
was in, even to extremes; if he wanted to laugh, she would laugh too, and if
he had wanted to cry she believed she could have done that also. Sometimes
she would tell him the only funny stories she knew, which were about Cheldean
or the Geneva school; they were mostly rather silly yarns, even if they were
funny at all, and it was odd to feel their schoolgirl importance dwindling in
retrospect while she narrated them, so that she could tick them off
afterwards as things never to be told again. He seemed interested, however,
and often asked about her school friend, Joan Martin, suggesting again that
she should write and try to re- establish the friendship. But Livia said it
was no use now; she was sure they wouldn't have a thing in common, even apart
from the doubtful incident of the watch.

"But you ought to have friends, Livia—YOUNG friends. I know it would
be hard for you to make them in Browdley—for various reasons... but you
ought to have them—there ought to be people of your own age whom you
could spend holidays with at their homes."

"Or they could come here to spend holidays with me—how would you
like that?"

The point was taken. He replied: "I wouldn't mind it so much. I wouldn't
have to see a great deal of them, and if they were YOUR friends, I'd do my
best to make them feel at home."

She smiled. "But they wouldn't be, they couldn't be, and I'd mind them
here, anyway. Martin, don't you worry about me, either." And then sharply:
"Who's been talking to you? Sarah? She had no business to... why should she
interfere?"

He did not deny that Sarah had talked to him.

"All right," he said temporizingly, "but don't go and nag Sarah about it.
She means well."

"That's not always a good defence," she said, thinking of it suddenly,
"when people do the wrong thing."

She often gave him cues like that, as they occurred to her on the spur of
the moment, hoping they might lead him into talk of the past. But they never
did, and she wondered if he ever guessed that they were deliberately put out,
and if he just as deliberately ignored them. One evening, however, without
any cue at all, he began to talk of his years in prison. They were walking in
the garden, with the stars especially bright in the frosty air, and that drew
him to remark that the books he had read in prison were mostly about
astronomy and philosophy. "You see, in prison, after the first period of
getting used to it, which is rather dreadful, you slip into a mood of
timelessness that isn't either happy or unhappy, and in that mood—for
me, at any rate—the things to think about were the timeless ones
—the mysteries of life and existence that have sent many men into cells
not very different from mine... the cells of monasteries, or the other kind
where mad people are put. Not that I invented any special philosophy or had
any special vision to match those I read about. I don't have the tight
quality of mind."

"Neither do I," she answered. "You liked that kind of book because you
were in prison, but I'd feel in prison if I had to read that kind of
book."

"I know," he smiled. "But a very kind and gentle prison. A prison within
the other prison. It wasn't so bad—although, as I said, my mind wasn't
exactly equal to it—because, after all, I'd only been a smart business
man most of my life."

"And not even so smart," she said softly, taking his arm.

"That's so. Well, let's say just a business man. Perhaps that's why I
think now of the end of a man's life as a sort of taking-over by a junior
partner—some cheeky young fellow whom at first you thought of no
account, but he grows and grows inside your affairs till he begins to touch
them all—you'd like to get rid of him but you can't, he's the fellow
you try to forget when you go to sleep, but he wakes you in the morning with
his nagging and needling... the first step you take you know he's still
there, at your elbow, jogging and shoving and hurting like the devil...
you're at his mercy—his strength grows all the time at the expense of
yours—he knows he's going to have his own way in the end—it's
only a matter of time, and a horrible time at that... and from his point of
view, of course, everything's going exactly as it should—HE is healthy,
striving, spreading—you are just an old decaying out-of- date thing he
feeds on." He checked himself. "Am I talking too much?"

"No," she answered, transfixed.

"Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Not altogether." She added quickly: "But I don't mind not knowing
altogether. You remember once I said I didn't mind being bored. When you
don't mind being bored, it isn't boredom, really. And it's like that when you
don't mind not understanding—perhaps it means that you DO understand
—a little."

"I hope so," he said, holding closely to her as they reached an uphill
part of the path. "Now tell me some more about Cheldean."

She racked her brains to think of a story because she knew that in some
obscure way those yarns about school life took his mind in a pleasant
direction, even if he did not always listen carefully; but she had already
told him most that had happened, and now she could only think of something
that had not happened. It was an incident she had once invented during a
rather dull service in the Cheldean school chapel. The preacher was a local
divine who came regularly and always devoted a large part of his extempore
prayer to the weather; he was never satisfied with it and always wanted God
to change it to something else, so that the slightest sign of floods,
drought, a cold wave or a heat wave, gave him an excuse. One sunny Sunday
after a week of consecutive fine days, he prayed most eloquently for rain
—which the girls definitely did not want, since there was a school
holiday the next day; and Livia, sharing this resentment, suddenly noticed a
sort of trap-door in the roof of the chapel just over the pulpit.

What fun, she thought, if one had climbed up there with a bucket of water
and, at the moment of the appeal, had poured it down over the preacher's
head! The thought was so beguiling that she had giggled quietly in the pew;
but now, telling the story to Martin as a true one, she had him laughing
aloud.

"What really made you do it?" he asked. "Just for a lark?"

"I wanted to see his face when he looked up," she said, still using her
imagination. "I thought he might think I was God."

She had to invent the sequel of her own discovery and punishment, at which
he kept on laughing. In doing so he half stumbled to his knees; and while she
was helping him up Watson entered the garden from the yard. He gave them both
a rather long and curious stare, and a few hours afterwards, catching Livia
alone, asked how her father was. She answered "All right," as she always did
to that question.

Watson grinned. "Just a little drop too much sometimes, eh?"

"What do you mean?" Then Livia realized what he did mean and was immensely
relieved. She had been afraid for a moment that he might have deduced some
real illness, and his mistake seemed the happiest and simplest alibi, not
only for past but possibly future events also.

She therefore smiled and retorted: "You ought to know the symptoms,
Watson, if anyone does."

From then on, Livia cared less about what was seen and heard, even though
Watson's knowing impertinences increased.

* * * * *

One evening Martin called her attention to a white dog
walking along the
path towards them, but she saw it was not a dog, but a piece of newspaper
blown in the wind; but he still insisted it was a dog and stopped to touch
it, then said it had run away. That made her realize how bad his sight was
becoming, and she begged him to see some other eye doctor; perhaps a special
kind of glasses or treatment would help; even if Dr. Whiteside were no use,
surely there must be someone in Mulcaster or London... But he said no; it had
all been diagnosed and prescribed for before; there was really nothing anyone
could do about it—perhaps it would not get any worse. And he could
still see many things perfectly well—colours, for instance. The red
geraniums, the blue lobelias, the yellow sunflowers; he welcomed them all
each day. That gave her the idea to put on a scarlet dress the next time she
walked with him, and he was delighted. From which she promptly derived
another idea, and that evening, though she was poor at sewing, she worked
hard after he had gone to bed, cutting up an old patchwork quilt and making
it into a multi-coloured dress to wear the following day. And he was
delighted again.

She then thought he might like a real white dog, and asked Watson to get
one; but when the dog appeared and was duly presented to his master in the
garden, he wriggled loose and scampered into the clough. "There you are,"
Martin laughed, when she fetched the animal back. "That's what happened
before. The white dog will have nothing to do with me."

"Then I must be a white cat," she answered breathlessly. She had noticed
before that the silliest repartee of this kind seemed to lift his mood; it
was strange, indeed, how much of their talk had recently been either silly or
abstruse, seeming to skip the ordinary world in between. And as usual, the
silliness worked; he was lifted. "Come along, little white cat," he laughed
again.

"Yes—and the white cat won't run away," she answered.

She could see that he was recalling something. "But a holiday, though...
that would be all right. Why don't you take one?"

"A holiday?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Away... from YOU?"

"Well, only for a time..."

Suspicion filled her mind. "One of Sarah's ideas?"

"Now, now, don't get cross with Sarah. She's not the only one who thinks
you need a holiday."

"Who else, then?"

"Oh... several people..."

"Who? WHO?"

He wouldn't tell her, but it was easy to worm the truth out of Sarah, and
the full truth proved even darker than her suspicion. For it seemed that old
Richard Felsby (he of all people) had visited Stoneclough recently and talked
to Martin not merely about her taking a holiday, but about her leaving
Stoneclough altogether. Some friends of Richard's who lived on the coast of
North Wales had been approached and had agreed to have her stay with them
indefinitely; Richard had offered to pay all expenses, and Martin had
actually approved the idea. This was the biggest blow of all; yet after a
wild scene with Sarah she could only reproach him sombrely. How could he have
even considered such a thing? And that awful old man, Richard Felsby—
how dared HE interfere with her and her affairs? "Oh, Martin, I thought he
never visited you any more. I thought you'd quarrelled. I hoped you were
enemies for ever."

"Livia, he just called on business the other day—while you were out.
Something about a new mortgage on the house."

"But he talked about ME—you both did—planning to have me sent
away—and Sarah already getting my clothes ready—all of
you—behind my back—against me—plotting—and then
pretending it was just a holiday—"

"Livia, please—it wasn't like that at all—"

"Do you know what I'll do? I'll hate them both as long as I live—
I'll NEVER forgive them—either of them—"

"They were only thinking of what might be your own best
interests—"

"To send me away from you? Is that what YOU think too? You don't want me
here?"

"Livia, please... You know how much I like you—"

"I like you too. I love you. I've told you that before. And I wouldn't go,
even for a holiday. I'll never leave you. They'd have to drag me out of the
house and if they took me anywhere else I'd run away and I'd fight them all
the time. I'd kill anybody who tried to send me away from you."

"Now, Livia, Livia... why should you talk like that?"

"Because I'm so happy here. What on earth would I do alone in a strange
place?"

"You wouldn't be alone—"

"I'd be alone if I left you alone. I won't go anywhere unless you go with
me. Then I'll go—wherever it is. Even if you went out of your mind I'd
go out of mine too. That's a bargain... So don't you try to get rid of me."
She put her hands up to his face and clawed him gently with her finger-nails,
suddenly and rather hysterically laughing. "The little white cat will scratch
you to death if you even think of it."

* * * * *

Dr. Whiteside happened to meet Livia in Browdley one
afternoon. She did
not mention her father, until asked, and then she said he was 'all right'.
The doctor was an old man now, long retired from practice, and for that
reason even readier to think out the problems of the families he had once
attended. He well remembered advising Emily to tell Livia the truth and send
her to school lest the life at Stoneclough, without playmates of her own age,
should make her grow up neurotic and self-centred; he had not seen the girl
often since then, but now, even to his dimmed perceptions, she looked as if
everything had happened just as he had feared. There was the peculiar rapt
expression, the angular tension of her whole body as she stopped to speak to
him in the street. And he made up his mind there and then to visit
Stoneclough unasked; he did not care how John received him, it was the girl
he was thinking about. She ought to be sent away, and he would tell John this
and be damned to the fellow.

So a few days later, amidst pouring rain that had already flooded the
low-lying districts of Browdley, Dr. Whiteside had his old coachman-chauffeur
drive him up to Stoneclough. Admitted by Watson, he was glad to find Livia
out, and made his own way across the hall to the drawing-room. He walked in
without ceremony, being both in the mood and at an age when such things were
possible. John Channing sat alone by the fireside, with a white wire-haired
terrier on his lap. It was one of the almost lucid intervals, less frequent
now and more fragmentary; the younger man shook hands, invited the doctor to
sit down, remarked on the weather, and in all ways but one seemed perfectly
normal. The exception lay in the fact that though he clearly did not
recognize Dr. Whiteside, he showed no surprise that a stranger should walk in
unannounced.

It would have puzzled a man less subject to freaks of behaviour than Dr.
Whiteside himself. "Good God, man, don't you REMEMBER me?" was all he
exclaimed. "Whiteside... DOCTOR Whiteside. I've been meaning to look you up
for a long while... How are you getting on?"

"Oh, not so badly, thanks. Yes, of course I remember you now. It's—
it's just that I don't SEE very well."

"Still the same trouble?"

"No. It never was what you diagnosed."

"You don't say?" Dr. Whiteside was somewhat discomfited. "Well, of course,
I'm not a specialist. I hope you consulted one."

"I did."

"And what did he say?"

"That's my business, if you don't mind."

"Why... certainly. I beg your pardon." But by this time Dr. Whiteside's
interest, both private and professional, was thoroughly aroused. He was not
really a stupid doctor, only a rather perfunctory one when people came to him
with vague complaints, such as "a little trouble with my eyes". On the
occasion of that visit several years before, he had discovered a few symptoms
of strain and had recommended a local oculist who would make a more detailed
examination. As he never heard that Channing visited the oculist, he had
concluded that whatever was wrong had got right of its own accord, as so many
ailments do; but now, staring closely, he detected other symptoms— much
more serious ones. Of course he couldn't be sure, but if what he instantly
thought of were possible, then it was rather appalling...

He continued, automatically turning on the jaunty air that he always
adopted at such moments, yet at the same time reflecting that the real object
of his visit was now more necessary than ever: "Matter of fact, I didn't come
to talk about you at all."

"Good—because it's the one subject I try not to be interested in.
What DID you come to talk about?"

Dr. Whiteside answered bluntly: "Livia."

"Livia? Fine—go ahead. Too bad she's out shopping now, or you could
talk to her yourself... What about her, though?" Then with sudden darkening
urgency: "She's not ill, is she? There's nothing happened to her?"

Dr. Whiteside saw a loophole into the argument which he knew had to come.
"If she WERE ill, John, or if anything WERE to happen to her... and I'm
telling you this frankly, mind... it would be nobody's fault but yours."

"But she's NOT ill... tell me... tell me..."

"No, she's not exactly ill. She's just in a rather nervous state..."

"I know—she ought to go away. Matter of fact it was all
arranged—"

"Yes, Richard told me, but he didn't tell me she hadn't gone."

"He doesn't know that yet... But she's not ILL?... You're not keeping
something from me?"

"I've said she's in a rather nervous state. That describes it pretty well.
A VERY nervous state... as apparently you are yourself."

"Oh, never mind me. Leave me out of it."

"But I can't entirely—in what I have to say."

"Then for God's sake get on with saying it!"

After a pause Dr. Whiteside resumed: "She's very fond of you, isn't
she?"

The question seemed to bring instant calm to the discussion.

"I daresay. I am of her too. She's kind to me. You'd never believe how
kind to me she is. I often wonder why, because—as I've told her
—I never did anything for her except bring her into the world, and
that's a doubtful privilege... but she's so kind—so WONDERFULLY
kind."

Dr. Whiteside cleared his throat; he would soon be on delicate ground.
"Has it ever occurred to you...?" He hesitated, then leaned forward to pat
the head of the terrier and was disconcerted when the animal growled at him.
"A faithful dog, I can see."

"Livia gave him to me. Becky, his name is. She gave me this pipe too
—though I can't smoke any more—it hurts my head to have a pipe in
my mouth. She doesn't know that—please don't tell her. She's always
giving me things. I give her things too, but I can afford so little
nowadays... and those records were never returned. The railway people never
found them. They were Mozart records—she loves Mozart."

Dr. Whiteside nodded grimly. Presently he said, beginning afresh: "Has it
ever occurred to you that she never remembered you as a child... so that when
she saw you a few years ago it was like meeting a stranger for the first
time?"

"Why, of course. That's what makes it so remarkable. Two strangers. And
very much at odds with the world—both of us. We've managed to get along
pretty well. But I agree with you—that is, if the point you're making
is about her health... a long holiday... Richard's right... she needs it.
Sarah says so too..." Then suddenly, in a changed voice: "Dr. Whiteside, I'm
not well—I have to admit that. In fact, there are times when I'm very
far from well. Will you please tell me—quickly, please— because
there's not a great deal of time... exactly what are you driving at?"

Half an hour later Dr. Whiteside left the house, having discovered a great
deal more than he had allowed the other to realize, and having said perhaps
more than he himself had intended.

* * * * *

Livia's shopping was considerably delayed that afternoon.
She was not
temperamentally a very good driver of a car, and after such rain as had
fallen during several consecutive days there were extra hazards in travelling
to and from Sloneclough. It was quite a phenomenal rain; all the streets near
the river were under water, with basements engulfed and families living in
upper floors; the Advertiser and the Guardian both reported it as the worst
flood within living memory. This would have been enough for Browdley to
gossip about, yet when Livia entered shops to make her purchases she could
feel she was changing the subject of scores of conversations. For the town
was already full of rumours about Stoneclough. A few words from Watson had
been sufficient; their very fewness gave larger scope to theory,
interpretation, pure invention. The whole history of the Channing family,
their crimes, scandals, and downfall, was revived under a new spotlight. It
was impossible not to wonder what secrets lay behind the eyes of a girl who
looked and talked as if she were half a child and half an adult, but nothing
at all of an eighteen-year-old.

She shopped at the butcher's, the grocer's, the pastry-cook's. It was
remembered afterwards (by individuals) that she had bought some pipe tobacco
at the tobacconist's, and some lengths of coloured ribbon in the drapery
department of the Co-operative shop. She was quick-spoken, as always; knew
exactly what she wanted, what it should cost, and if it were of good quality.
A true Channing in that respect, at least.

After dusk she set out on the return journey. The old Citroën spluttered
slowly uphill with water leaking under the hood; it was a car that did not
take the hill too easily at the best of times, but now both wind and rain
were beating against its progress, and every cross-street sent rivers of
muddy flood-water swirling against the wheels. It was all she could do to
hold the road, and no more easily as she climbed, because the stream through
the clough had become a torrent breaking bounds in places. She hoped Martin
would be asleep by the time she reached the house, because if not, he might
be worrying about her safe arrival. He usually dozed off about dusk and would
often wake again past midnight, when it was her habit to cook a small meal
which they would eat in the kitchen; after which they would talk until he
felt like dozing again, or sometimes, in fine weather, they would pace up and
down the garden in the darkness.

The strain of the drive had tired her, and when she finally slewed the car
into the garage she saw with relief that there was no chink of light at the
drawing-room window. That meant he had already gone to bed and might well be
asleep. Suddenly as she closed the garage door she noticed tyre-marks in the
yard that were not from the car, or from Watson's motor-cycle; and a moment
later, seeing Watson wheeling his machine out of the shed where he kept it,
she asked if anyone had called during the day.

"Only Dr. Whiteside."

"HE called? Why?"

"Oh, for a chat, I suppose. He didn't stay long."

She remembered then that when she had recently met the doctor in Browdley
he had said something about calling round to see her father; though she
hadn't expected him to do so with such promptness, especially during the
rain. "You'd better be careful," she warned Watson. "The road's nearly washed
out down the hill."

"Oh, I'll be all right, miss."

He jumped on his machine and was off. She idly wondered where he could
think of going on such a night; she was as far as ever from guessing that
Stoneclough's inhabitants were beginning to get on his nerves.

She entered the house through the kitchen. As she passed Sarah's room,
near by, she heard a voice and listened; but it was only Sarah herself,
praying aloud in a curious wheezy whine. The whine was based on jumbled
recollections of Methodist local preachers whom Sarah, in the past, had
admired; the wheeze was merely asthmatic. Sarah had always prayed aloud
before going to bed, and it brought back to Livia memories of a thousand
childhood nights when she herself (at Sarah's command) had done the same,
kneeling and shivering in a night-dress, and how the nightdress popping over
her head just before she began had become a symbol of prayer, so that the
words "Night is drawing nigh" in the hymn had meant "Nighties drawing nigh"
to her until long after she began to read.

She went upstairs to her own bedroom and was asleep within minutes. She
did not pray; somehow the act of prayer seemed more fitting before a whole
night's sleep, not just a few hours until midnight. And besides, she was apt
to pray harder during the day, while she was doing other things as well.

But that night, had she known, she might have said an extra prayer, for
when she awoke it was almost dawn; from utter exhaustion she had slept eight
hours. Immediately—and perhaps it had wakened her—she heard the
bark of a dog in the distance, the little white dog whom Martin had called
Becky, because (they had both noticed) it never seemed to follow them when
they walked, but liked to run on ahead and then turn round, as if
beckoning.

The bark continued, giving her a sudden premonition of tragedy. She
hurried through the dark house and across the garden, following the sound,
and Becky came running forward to meet her at the top of the clough.

Martin's body was wedged between rocks where the river poured in spate;
she made the discovery quickly because Becky jumped into the torrent near the
exact spot. She tried to drag the body out of the water, but lacked the
strength. She noticed later that where the path came nearest to the rocks
there had been a small landslide.

* * * * *

It was full dawn as she returned to Stoneclough. Sarah was
still asleep,
Watson had been out all night; the house was cold and grey and silent.
Entering it she knew she could not tell anyone yet; she felt herself spinning
into unconsciousness as she flung herself on a couch in the drawing-room.
Just a little while to gain control, and then hold it for a lifetime—
just half an hour, maybe, until the sun was up, until Sarah, taking tea to
his room, would herself discover the absence. Presently she noticed that
Becky was wet and shivering, and the dog's simple need roused her to equally
simple action. But a moment later, while she was in the kitchen rubbing him
with a towel, some men appeared in the yard outside. They were Browdley
Council workmen, in charge of an engineer; they had walked up the clough to
see if the flood-water was abating; and in so doing they had found Martin's
body.

One of the workmen claimed afterwards that when Livia was given the news
she said in a low voice, "Yes, I know," but she denied this later in the
morning to Dr. Whiteside, and under his tactful handling the matter was not
raised at the inquest, though it was freely gossiped about in the town. She
was so distracted, anyhow, that (as all the men agreed) she might not have
known what she was saying even if she HAD said it. But it was still a little
odd, as were a great many other things.

Christmas and the Christmas Number of the Guardian came a
few weeks later, and George Boswell, summarizing the local events of the year
in a special article, then wrote as follows:

"... In November Browdley suffered its worst floods within living memory,
while in the same month the death, under suspicious circumstances, of Mr.
John Channing, of Stoneclough, recalled the Channing Mill crash of a
generation ago—an event notable in the history of our town both on
account of the number of its victims and the sensational criminal trial that
followed it..."

When George handed this to Will Spivey, his sub-editor, printer,
proof-reader, ad-salesman, and general all-purposes assistant, the latter
scrutinized it, grunted, then carefully blue-pencilled the word
"suspicious".

"You can't say that, George."

"Why not? Isn't it true?"

"Have ye never heard 'the greater the truth the greater the libel'?"

"Libel? Who's libelling who?"

"The verdict at the inquest was 'accidental death'."

"Aye, and everybody knows why—because old Whiteside was coroner and
made 'em believe what the girl said... As if anyone sober or in his right
mind would be taking walks in the clough at night during the worst storm for
years—"

"I know, George. And there's some say he wasn't sober and there's others
say he wasn't in his right mind and I've even heard it whispered
that—"

"Nay—I'm not saying or whispering anything, because I simply don't
know and I refuse to believe gossip. I'm just content with the word
'suspicious'."

"No good, George. The jury found it was accidental—you can't
contradict 'em. Change to 'tragic' and you'll be safe."

George reluctantly made the substitution. It was his first year as editor
and he did not want trouble. Already he had discovered that the written word
had more pitfalls than the spoken, and that the Guardian was a rather sickly
infant whose survival could only be contrived from week to week by the most
delicate nursing.

"There you are then," he muttered, handing back the corrected copy. "And
if I'm safe, that's more than Channing's ever was..."

* * * * *

Ever since he could remember, the Channing name had been
part of his life.
He had known that his father worked at 'Channing's' before he had any idea
what Channing's was, and when he was old enough to associate the word with
the humming, three-storied, soot- blackened cotton mill at the end of the
street, it had taken shape in his mind as something fixed, universal, and
eternal. As a child the rows of windows had seemed endless to him as he
walked under their sills, and it became an exciting dream to think that as he
grew up he would presently be tall enough to see through them. When that time
did come he found there was nothing to see—just the faint suggestion of
moving wheels behind the wired and murky glass, with the humming louder when
he put his ears to it. He had grown up to feel that work at Channing's was in
the natural order of events, like play along the canal-bank and chapel on
Sundays. Indeed, it was the shrill Channing's 'buzzer' that marked Time, and
the Channing's brick wall that marked Space, in his own small boy's
world.

Even after the death of his parents, when he had gone to live with his
uncle in another part of the town, Channing's merely acquired an extra
attribute, for Uncle Joe called it 'safe'. George soon learned that it paid
his uncle, who did not work there, just as regularly as it had paid his
father, who HAD worked; though why this should be, he could not imagine. It
was, however, of importance because his uncle had promised to send him to
Browdley Grammar School and pay the fees out of 'the Channing's money'. Then
suddenly disaster struck. Even to an intelligent schoolboy it was all rather
incomprehensible, for the mill still stood, not a brick disturbed, not a
cadence lost from the call of its early morning and late afternoon siren; and
yet, in a way that undoubtedly hurried Uncle Joe to his grave, Channing's
proved no longer 'safe'.

So George, because of this, had left an elementary school when he was
thirteen, and had taken various jobs that gave him nothing but a series of
pointless and not always pleasant experiences, and then had come the war,
with more pointless and not always pleasant experiences—in France and
elsewhere. During this time, however, his dissatisfactions had acquired a
pattern, and the pattern had acquired a trend; so that on seeing Browdley
again, war-injured but recovering, at the age of thirty, he had known what he
wanted to do and had begun right away to do it. At a Council by-election he
won a victory that surprised even himself, while about the same time he took
over the almost bankrupt Guardian.

And after several months the Guardian was still almost bankrupt. For one
reason, it had no monopoly (the Browdley Advertiser, one of a chain of local
papers, enjoyed a far bigger circulation), and Browdley folk remained
obstinately fixed in their reading habits even when an increasing number of
them favoured George's political opinions. He would have been badly off
indeed but for the small printing establishment (two hand presses with three
employees), which not only put out the regular weekly edition but also
received official printing jobs from the Browdley municipality. And here, of
course, lay an obvious opening for George's political opponents, some of whom
whispered "graft" whenever the Council (George scrupulously absenting himself
from the vote) decided to hand him another contract. That they did so at all,
however, testified to his rising popularity as well as to the fact that the
enmities he made were rarely bitter or lasting. The truth was, as an enemy
once remarked, it was damned hard to hate George, and whispers of graft did
not stick very well because, graft or no graft, it really was quite obvious
that he was not lining his pockets with any considerable success. He lived
modestly in the oldish, inconvenient house which, adjoining the printing
works, he had acquired when nobody else wanted either; and he often found it
as hard to pay his newsprint bills as to collect from some of his customers.
He dressed rather shabbily and rode a bicycle except when official business
entitled him to the use of a municipal car. The local bank-manager and
income-tax assessor knew all these and other pertinent details, but as they
belonged to the opposition party they were constrained to attack him in
reverse: if, they argued, George succeeded so meagrely with his own small
business, how could Browdley feel confidence in his capacity to run the town?
But humbler citizens were not much influenced by this. Most of them knew
George personally and felt that his total lack of prosperity made him all the
more human, municipal contracts or not. They LIKED him, in fact, and a great
many fought his battle, and if a few of them fought it bitterly, he would
sometimes reward them with a speech that made them think he was secretly as
bitter as they were. But in that they were wrong, for George was just fiery,
effervescent, genuinely indignant over much that he saw around him, but
incurably romantic about what he saw in his own mind. He was also na ve in
the way he tackled his opponents—first of all overwhelming them with a
sort of Galahad impetuosity, then wondering if perhaps he had been a little
unfair, and later—as often as not—making some quixotic gesture of
retractation or conciliation.

There was that Council meeting, for instance, in the spring of 1918, at
which he first spoke Livia's name—and with a ring of challenge as he
pitched his voice to the public gallery. "I've always held," he began, "that
no accident of birth should ever stand in the way of merit—(Cheers)
—in fact it's one of the few things I'm prepared to be thoroughly
consistent about. (Laughter.) Councillor Whaley has just referred to the
great injustice done to our fellow-citizens many years ago by one whose name
has a certain prominence in the history of this town. I think Councillor
Whaley put the matter far too mildly in using the word 'injustice'. I'd
prefer myself to call it the most damnable piece of financial knavery ever
perpetrated by a self-acknowledged crook at the expense of thousands of
honest hard-working folks. (Loud cheers.) Oh yes, I know the saying 'De
mortuis nil nisi bonum'—if I've got the pronunciation wrong perhaps
some of the gentlemen on the other side who have had the advantage of a
better education than mine will correct me—(Laughter)—at any
rate, they'll agree with me that the Latin words mean that you shall speak no
evil of the dead... But may I ask THIS question of Councillor Whaley—
suppose the dead reach out from their graves to continue the harm they did
during their lives—are we STILL to keep silent about them? (Loud and
prolonged cheers). Gentlemen... I wouldn't have referred to such a matter
unless the other side had thought fit to mention it first. But since they
did, I'll say this much—that in my opinion our town is STILL suffering
from the effects of the Channing Mill crash and the iniquitous swindle that
caused it! Its victims are to be found in every street— nay, almost in
every house. Certainly in ONE of our houses—the workhouse. (Cheers.)
What shall we say of any man, living or dead, who can be accounted personally
responsible for such a thing? To inherit control of an industrial concern and
then behave with such callous dishonesty that working people lose jobs and
life savings together, so that hundreds of homes are sacrificed and broken
up, so that health is imperilled and countless lives are embittered, so that
children have their educations interrupted and old folks are hastened to
their graves—if one man causes all this havoc, then in God's name what
shall we call him, or the system that gave him such power and
opportunity?"

Here the cheers and shouts of the gallery were interrupted by a shabby
little man in the back row who yelled out with piercing distinctness: "Don't
matter what you call 'im now, George. The bugger's dead." Whereupon cheers
dissolved into laughter, and George, sensing the moment for a change of mood,
dropped his voice to a much more prosaic level and continued:

"Aye... let's cut the cackle and get down to the business in hand. There's
a war still on, and we must save a bit of our bad language for the Germans.
(Laughter.) I was just then tempted—as we all are sometimes— to
speak my mind. (Laughter.) I couldn't help it, and I think those who elected
me to this Council didn't really expect me ever to do anything else. (Cheers
and laughter.) And that's why I'm urging you now, as a man still speaking his
mind, not to pay off an old score on an innocent person. To begin with, the
score's too big. And then also, though we're often told that the sins of the
fathers get visited on the children, there isn't one of us who thinks that's
really a fair thing, or ought to be encouraged... Well, now let me really
come to the facts of the matter. We have tonight a subordinate municipal post
to fill for which we invited public applications. As I see it —and not
as some folks here seem to see it—there's only one thing we ought to
do, and that's what we always have done—choose the best person for the
job and let no other consideration matter. It's a simple method, and I'm all
against changing it." And then, dropping his voice to a monotone as he
consulted a sheet of paper: "I have here the list of applicants for the
position of junior library assistant, together with their qualifications. On
the basis of these facts, and these alone, I move that the application of
Miss Olivia Channing be accepted." (Cheers and some cries of dissent.)

The foregoing has been worth quoting verbatim, not only because it was one
of the events that shaped George's destiny, but as a sample of his
speech-making in those days. He always said he was no orator, and sincerely
believed it, but his opponents though reluctant to use the complimentary
term, were not so sure; at any rate they could call him a rabble-rouser. The
speech is typical in its astute and somewhat excessive preliminary agreement
with the other side (in this case his own side), putting them in a good
humour by stating their case better than they could themselves, so that
afterwards George's real point came as an intended anti- climax. He had often
by this means won victories almost by default. The jibe about his
fellow-members' superior education was also typical; it was true that many of
them had been to better schools, but extremely unlikely that any could
remember as much Latin as George had recently learned.

But most typical of all was his quixotic impulse to be fair; it was as if,
having called the father a crook, he felt in duty bound to find the daughter
a job.

On this occasion victory was anything but by default. His speech failed to
silence objectors, and there was further argument, some of it rancorous. But
the motion was eventually passed by a narrow margin, with much cross-voting;
so that in due course Miss Olivia Channing did indeed become junior assistant
in the Browdley Public Library at a commencing salary of forty-five shillings
a week.

"And a nice problem you've handed me," Dick Jordan remarked, meeting
George a few days later in Shawgate. The Librarian was one of George's
closest friends and political supporters.

"Why, Dick, isn't she any good?"

"She does the work all right, but—well, when you remember her father
there's a lot of things you can't feel sure of."

"Aye, and one of them's heredity," declared George, advancing stoutly to a
favourite topic. "Thank goodness it's not as important as environment,
because environment's something you can change."

"Not when you've already had it. What d'you think HER environment was like
at Stoneclough—up there with a man who'd done a stretch in prison and
drank heavily and was so impossible to live with that... oh, well, you've
heard some of the rumours, I daresay."

"I've heard 'em, but I don't see why they should make us condemn the girl.
Seems to me it's more a case for sympathy."

"She'll not find much of that in Browdley, George. It's one thing to swing
the Council by a speech, but when it comes to changing the minds of ordinary
folks who've lost their hard cash—"

"But SHE didn't steal it—"

"No, but she lived at Stoneclough, and for years that's been the symbol in
this town of being luckier than you deserve. And it's still the symbol,
George, in spite of all the mortgages on the place and no matter what the
girl herself had to put up with there..."

* * * * *

George did not meet her till some weeks after she had begun
work. He was
then studying hard for the final examination that might earn him a university
degree, and it was this that occupied his mind when he entered the Reference
Department of the Library on a sunny April afternoon. But when he left, a
couple of hours later, he could only think of the girl who had brought him
Volume Four of the Cambridge Modern History.

He always remembered her first words to him as she took his slip of paper,
scanned it, then him, then stepped back a pace. "COUNCILLOR Boswell?"

And his own first words as he stared at her for the first time: "Aye,
that's me."

"Then I want to thank you for—for—"

"Oh... so you're Olivia Channing?"

"Yes, that's why I want to thank you. It was kind of you to put in a word
for me."

"I didn't mean it as kindness—just fairness, that's all. But I'm
glad it turned out the way it did. How are you managing?"

"You mean the work? Oh, it's easy."

"Like it?"

"Pretty well."

"Only that?"

She smiled—a curious smile, for which George, who saw it often
afterwards, long sought an adjective, and in the end could only use Jordan's
description of the girl—he had said she looked 'haunted'.

She said now, with this smile: "People don't like ME, that's the
trouble."

He smiled back, robustly, cheerfully. "Can't expect them to, yet awhile.
You'll just have to live things down a bit."

"Live things down?

"Aye... if you know what I mean."

He wondered if, or how much, she did, especially as that ended their
conversation rather abruptly. She fetched him his book and did not resume
it.

* * * * *

After that first meeting he began to feel emotionally the
full force of
the argument he had stated in abstract terms at the Council meeting—
that the child should not suffer for the sins of the father. In this case the
sins of the father had been so considerable that the sufferings of the
daughter might well be on the same scale unless someone intervened on her
behalf; and George, having intervened once, could not help the growth of a
feeling of personal responsibility to match his awakening interest. He knew
that John Channing had died practically without means, despite the fact that
he had lived at Stoneclough from the time of his release from prison until
his death; and though the daughter's need to go out and earn her own living
did not stir George to any particular pity (for, after all, that was what
most Browdley girls had to do), he was nevertheless concerned that she should
be happy in her job, the more so as he had obtained it for her. Not till he
met her for the second time did it occur to him to wonder why on earth she
had applied for any job at all in a place where there was so much local
feeling against her family.

He spoke this thought aloud when (on a bus-top where he found himself next
to her) she admitted having encountered a good deal of coldness and even a
few personal insults at the Library.

"Then how about giving it up?" he asked, suddenly seeing things from her
angle and becoming indignant about them. "Would you be happier?"

"I need the money," she said simply.

"Aye, but there'd be other jobs in other places—why not try London,
for instance?"

"I'd rather stay here."

"You mean you LIKE Browdley?"

She shook her head.

"Then why?"

"It's my home—Stoneclough."

"Stoneclough? You mean the actual house? It means so much to you? You
still live there?"

"Yes, it's my home."

"I should have thought you'd have been glad to leave a place that had such
—er—unhappy associations."

She shook her head again.

After an awkward pause George continued: "Well, don't worry. Most people
have short memories."

"I haven't."

"Oh, I didn't mean THAT... I meant other people—they'll change their
minds about you if you stick it out."

(And yet as he said this he was aware of another phenomenon that became
familiar to him later—the ease with which, to her or in her presence,
he said things he did not really mean, or that his own judgment did not
support. For instance, it simply was not true that Browdley people had short
memories—on the contrary, though the Channing crash had taken place a
generation before, it was still remembered with bitterness, and the fact that
the girl had had unpleasant experiences at the Library proved it.)

She said: "Please don't think I'm complaining about the job. It was you
who asked me what it was like, otherwise I shouldn't have said anything."

"Well, I'm glad it doesn't bother you much. If it does, let me know."

(But that also was absurd. What could he do, even if she did let him know?
Any other job in Browdley would have the same drawbacks, and outside Browdley
he had no influence to find her a job at all.)

She said, smiling: "Thanks. It's very kind of you... I'm afraid this is my
stop... Good night."

It was at the corner where the lane to Stoneclough left the main road. He
suddenly realized that and detained her for a few seconds with an astonished:
"But—but—are you going home NOW? How do you get there from
here?"

"I walk."

"But it's three miles."

"I don't mind. I love walking... Good night."

After she had gone and the bus had re-started he began to think it over.
Six miles a day on foot oughtn't to have shocked him (he was a good walker
himself and had often, when he was her age, walked to and from jobs to save
bus fares), but it was strange to realize that till then he had never
wondered how or where the girl did live, travel to her work, and so on. So
she was still at Stoneclough?... Too bad there were no other houses in that
direction, or he might have asked the Transport Committee, of which he was a
member, to start a new bus route.

He met her several times again on that same trip and each time he found
himself more interested. Up to a point they seemed to get along excellently;
she was quick-minded and charmingly friendly, and when she spoke it was with
a sort of grave ardour that made even chatter sound significant; yet beyond
that a shadow seemed to fall between them. After thinking it over with some
deliberation he decided what the shadow was; it must be the fact (doubtless
known to her) that he had publicly attacked her father and family. He was
prepared for some inevitable mention of this sooner or later, and planned to
be completely frank and outspoken. "Now please," he would say, "let's not
waste time over that. I said what I meant and I still mean it. But I don't
expect YOU to see things my way—after all, he was your father, whatever
else he was."

But she never gave him the cue. One day, however, he met Dick Jordan in
the street again and heard the story of a rather odd incident that had taken
place at the Library.

"I was in my office, George, when I heard a bit of a row going on at the
counter, so I went out to see what it was, and there was old Horncastle
calling the girl names and shouting about her father having ruined him. You
know Bob Horncastle?"

Yes, George knew him. He was a gnarled industrial veteran who had lost
both job and money in the Channing crash and had lived ever since on the
verge of penury, his embitterment becoming a shade nearer lunacy each year.
Browdley knew all about him. He was a hard case, but no harder than some
others.

"The girl was standing there, George, pale and not saying a word and with
that haunted look I told you about, while the old chap poured out a stream of
abuse. When he saw me approaching he stopped, and then the girl said very
quietly—'I'm sorry, Mr. Horncastle.' She had to get his name from the
Library card she was holding, and the way she did that—the way she
looked down, I mean, and then looked up again and spoke his name... well, it
was just like a play, especially when she went on—'But why don't you
scribble it in the margins of the book, as all the other people do?' Then she
just walked off and left him to me to calm down. Of course there wasn't much
I could say—he's too old, for one thing, and the way he was carrying on
I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack. Finally I got him to go,
and then I went back to my office and nearly had a heart attack myself. That
kind of thing upsets me."

George was troubled. "I must admit I didn't think folks would take it out
of the girl so much. And from what you say, Dick, it wasn't her fault—
she gave no provocation."

"The bare fact of her being there was provocation enough to Horncastle...
But there's a sequel. After he'd gone I was curious about the girl's remark
about people scribbling in the margins of the book... WHAT book? There's only
one it could have been, and that's the detailed report of Channing's trial,
so I thought I'd look to see if it was on the shelves. It was, and sure
enough, the margins were messed up with pencilled comments—including
just about the foulest language I ever heard of—and in different
handwritings too. Looked as if a good many Browdley readers had had a go at
expressing their opinions... Of course it was our own negligence not to have
spotted it earlier—we're supposed to go through all the books at the
annual stocktaking and rub out anything of that sort, but apparently this
book had been overlooked. So I put it aside and thought I'd do the job myself
as soon as I had time. But then another queer thing happened. Later in the
afternoon the girl came to my office and asked where the book was. Seems
rather as if she kept an eye on it and had already noticed it was gone
—for of course she could check to see it hadn't been lent out. I told
her I'd taken it and that I intended to have the objectionable remarks
removed, and then she said—and again I thought of somebody in a play
—she said: 'Oh, please don't on my account.' I gave her a bit of a
sharp answer—I said, 'It's not on your account at all, young lady, it's
simply a Library rule.' And that ended the matter... But I must say, she's a
queer customer. You'd have thought she'd be glad I was going to do it.
Frankly, I can't make her out."

George nodded thoughtfully. "Aye, she's a problem, I can see that. Maybe I
made a mistake in getting her the job, but it's done now and can't be undone.
If I were you, though, I'd try to find her some kind of work where she
doesn't have to meet folks so much... Isn't there something?"

Jordan gave George a shrewd glance. "Can't say. Maybe I'm no judge, or
maybe she's just not my style. She attracts ATTENTION, if that's what you
mean, but whether it's by her looks or a sort of personality, or something
else, I can't be sure. I know I wouldn't want her in my office."

"She'd give you more heart attacks, is that it?" said George,
laughing.

The Librarian joined in the joke, as boisterously as a man may who
actually does have a weak heart as well as a nagging wife.

* * * * *

So it was arranged that the girl should tackle the
indexing, and George
wondered how it had worked out when next he met her, for she certainly seemed
happier and greeted him with a smile whose warmth he felt, for the first
time, was somehow intimate and personal. They chatted—on the bus-top as
usual—without mentioning anything important till she said, apropos of
nothing in particular: "Aren't you soon taking a university degree?"

"Aye, if I can pass the exam, and that's a pretty big 'if'. Who told
you?"

"I heard someone saying something about it at the Library. You see, you
ask for so many books." She added: "Such DIFFICULT books too... and yet..."
And then she hesitated.

"And yet what?"

"Those 'ayes' of yours."

"My EYES?"

"I mean the 'ayes' you say instead of 'yes'."

He flushed, and for a moment fought down a humourless impulse to be
offended. Then he laughed. "Aye," he answered, with slow deliberation. "I
daresay I could drop them if I disliked them enough. But I don't. And if
anybody else does... well, let 'em." And then he suddenly gave himself the
cue that he had waited for in vain from her. "Maybe you feel about your dad
like that. You just don't care what other people THINK—because it's
what you yourself FEEL that matters. I don't blame you. I've done my share in
attacking your family in this town—you probably know about that
—and I'm not going to make any apologies or take back a single word.
But I can't see why that should come between you and me, and for my part it
doesn't have to."

He paused to give her a chance to say something, but she said nothing, so
he went on: "Well, thank goodness that's off my chest. I've been looking for
the chance to say it because if you and I are going to get to know each other
well there has to be some sort of understanding about how we both feel about
ancient history. Aye, ancient history, that's what it is." He was relieved to
have found the phrase until he saw her face, turned to him with a look so
uninterpretable that it might have been slight amusement or slight horror,
but mixed, in either case, with a preponderance of simple curiosity. She
seemed to be waiting to hear what he would say next, and that, of course, put
him off so that he stopped talking altogether. Just then the bus reached the
corner of the Stoneclough lane, surprising them both, and as she sprang down
the steps with a quick smile and a good-night he had an overmastering urge to
follow her, if only not to leave the conversation poised for days, perhaps,
at such an impossible angle. So he ran after her and overtook her a little
way along the lane. "I don't need to study tonight," he said breathlessly
(she knew that he spent most of his evenings with the difficult Library
books). "I can walk part of the way with you—that is, if you don't
mind..."

"Why, of course not. I don't mind at all. But on one condition."

"Yes?"

"Let's not mention my father again... PLEASE."

"All right."

"EVER again? You promise?"

"Why, certainly—if that's what you wish, but I assure you I DO
understand how you feel—"

"No, no, you don't—you CAN'T... but you've promised, remember that.
From now on. From this minute on." And over the strained emphasis of her
words there came, like a veil slowly drawn, that curious 'haunted' smile.

So he walked with her, puzzled and somewhat discomfited at first, as he
changed the subject to Browdley and its affairs. He did so because, after his
promise, that seemed the easiest way to keep it; and sure enough, he was soon
at ease amidst the torrent of his own plans and ambitions, both personal and
for the town. She made few comments and when they said goodbye at the gates
of Stoneclough he could not forbear the somewhat chastened afterthought: "I
hope that didn't bore you. Or weren't you listening?"

She answered, smiling again, but this time differently: "Well, not ALL the
time. But I don't have to, do I? Can't I like you without liking the new
gas-works?"

"Aye," he said, smiling back as he gave her arm a farewell squeeze. "But I
can like you and STILL like the new gas-works. Why not?"

* * * * *

But COULD he? That was to some extent, both then and
afterwards, the
question.

He soon realized that he loved her—probably on the way home after
that first walk to Stoneclough. And immediately, of course, she became the
object of a crusade, for in those days that was the pattern of all George's
emotions—his passion for education, his eagerness to tear down the
slums of Browdley (already he had a scheme), his secret ambition to become
the town's member of Parliament—all were for the ultimate benefit of
others as well as to satisfy personal desire. And soon, eclipsing everything
else in intensity, came his desire to marry Livia—that is to say, to
RESCUE her. To rescue her from Stoneclough, from the thraldom of ancient
history; and now, additionally, to rescue her from a situation he had himself
got her into, where she was at the mercy of casual insults from strangers as
well as of her own morbid preoccupation with a book about her father's trial.
All this, as George had to admit, totalled up to a rather substantial piece
of rescue work, but he had the urge to do it, and his Galahad mood rose as
always to put desire into action. It did not take more than a few weeks to
bring that desire to fever point, especially when the chance of prompt action
was denied. For she refused his first proposal of marriage. She seemed
genuinely bewildered, as if it were the last thing she had ever expected. She
LIKED him, she admitted—oh yes, she liked him a great deal; but as for
marrying—well, she thought she was far too young, and anyhow, she
didn't think she would ever want to marry anybody. And she was quite happy
where and how she was—at Stoneclough. In fact, to bring the matter to
its apparently crucial issue, she couldn't and wouldn't leave
Stoneclough.

George took his 'no' for an answer exactly as he had begun to do on the
Council whenever he brought up his housing scheme—that is to say, he
seemed to accept it good-humouredly and as final while all the time he was
planning how he could best bring the matter up again. Besides which, in this
case, he was in love. He had supposed he had been in love before, on several
occasions, but the difference in what he felt for Livia convinced him that
THIS was love—because why else should he begin to neglect his Council
work—not much, not even in a way that could be noticed by anyone else,
but enough to give him qualms of conscience only to be stifled by reflecting
that as soon as he had won her he would make up for lost time? He gave
himself the same consolation over similar neglect of his examination studies.
After all, even in battles, the first must come first. He had confidence that
he would win her eventually, not only because he had confidence about most
things in those days, but because—as he saw it —there was no
considerable rival in the field—only Stoneclough, and he felt himself
more than a match for bricks and mortar, however darkly consecrated. How
could she long hesitate between the past and the future, especially as there
were moments when he felt so sure of her —physical moments when she
seemed to withdraw into a world of her own sensations that offered neither
criticism nor restraint, in contrast to her usual behaviour, which was to
make of most contacts a struggle for mastery? He was a clumsy lover, and
ruefully aware of it; as he said once, when she emerged from her private
world to laugh at him: "Aye, I'm a bit better on committees..."

The fact that she would never say, in words, that she loved him mattered
less after she had said, both doubtfully and hopefully, in reply to his fifth
or sixth proposal: "I MIGHT marry you, George, some day. If I ever marry
anyone at all..."

He never passed beyond the gates of Stoneclough; she never invited him,
and he never suggested it. She told him little about herself, and the promise
he had given not to mention her father set limits to his personal questions
about other matters, though not to his curiosity. He wondered, for instance,
why old Richard Felsby, her father's former partner, had not helped her
financially, for Richard had dissolved partnership and sold out his interest
in the firm before the crash, so that he was still rich and could well have
afforded some gesture of generosity. But when once George spoke Richard
Felsby's name he knew he had in some way trespassed on forbidden territory.
"I don't see him," was all she said, "and I don't want to. I NEVER want to
see him."

She said little, either, about her life at Stoneclough, except to
reiterate, whenever he brought up the matter, that she would rather live
there than anywhere else, despite the inconvenience of the three-mile walk.
He gathered that there was some old woman, a kind of housekeeper, living
there also, and that the two of them shared cooking and other domestic jobs;
but she gave him few details and he did not care to probe. Most of his time
with her was spent along the Stoneclough road, walking evening after evening
during that long fine summer; but as the days shortened and the bad weather
came, they sometimes met in the Library at midday, when she had an hour off
and they could talk in one of the book-lined alcoves of the Reference
Department. They spoke then in whispers, because of the 'Silence' notice on
the wall; and there was piquancy in that, because as Chairman of the Public
Library Sub-Committee he had a sort of responsibility for seeing that Library
rules were enforced.

One lunch hour she greeted him in such a distraught way that he knew
immediately something was wrong. Soon she told him, and even in face of her
distress his heart leapt with every word of the revelation. By the time she
had finished he knew that fate had played into his hands, so he proposed
again, with all his quiet triumph hidden behind a veil of sympathy. For
George could not avoid a technique of persuasion that made his last thrust in
battle—the winning one—always the kindest. And by sheer
coincidence, in that odd way in which at important moments of life the eye is
apt to be caught by incongruous things, he noticed while he was talking that
just above her hair, and glinting in the same shaft of sunshine, lay an
imposing edition of Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. He
couldn't help smiling and thinking it a good omen.

The news that had so distressed her was that the bank had foreclosed the
mortgages on Stoneclough, so that she would have had to leave the house in
any event. George tried to feel that this did not detract from his triumph,
but merely contributed to it. He assured her that she would find it more fun
living in a small house than in a great barracks of a place like Stoneclough.
"I'd like to know what the bank thinks it can do with it..."

She made no comment, but asked after a pause: "Do you like dogs?"

"Aye, I like 'em all right. Used to have one when I lived with my Uncle
Joe—a big black retriever."

"My dog's small—and white. His name's Becky."

He suddenly realized what she was driving at. "You mean you want to bring
your dog to live with us? Why, of course... And I like any dog, for that
matter."

They were married a few weeks later at Browdley Register Office, with only
a few friends of George's in attendance. She was nineteen, and the fact that
he was getting on for twice that age was only one of the reasons why the
affair caused a local sensation.

Councillor Whaley, a seventy-year-old confirmed bachelor and one of those
political opponents whom George had converted into a staunch personal friend,
took him aside after the ceremony to say: "Well, George, she's smart enough,
and ye've got her, so God bless ye both... I doubt if it'll help ye, though,
when ye come up for re-election."

"And d'you think that worries me?" George retorted, with jovial
indignation. "Would you have me marry for votes?"

Tom Whaley chuckled. "I'll ask ye ten years hence if ye'd vote for
marriage—that's the real question." George then laughed back as he
clapped the old man on the shoulder and reflected privately that Tom Whaley
mightn't be alive ten years hence, and how lucky he himself was, by contrast,
to have so much time ahead, and to have it all with Livia. For he was still
young enough to think of what he wanted to do as a life-work, the more so as
the world looked as if it would give him a chance to do it.

George, ever ready to be optimistic, was particularly so on that day of
his marriage.

So were millions of others all over the earth—for it was the month
of November, 1918.

* * * * *

The honeymoon, at Bournemouth, was a happy one, and by the
time it was
over George knew a great many things—a few of them disconcerting
—about Livia, but one thing about himself that seemed to matter and was
simple enough, after all: he loved her. He loved her more, even, than he had
thought he would, or could, love any woman. When he woke in the mornings and
saw her still sleeping at his side he had a feeling of tenderness that partly
disappeared as soon as she wakened, but somehow left a fragrance that lasted
through the day, making him tolerant where he might have been unyielding,
amused where he might have been antagonized. For she was, he soon discovered,
a person with a very definite will of her own. He thought she was in some
ways more like an animal than any human being he had ever met; but she was
like a REAL animal, he qualified, not just a human animal. There was intense
physicality about her, but it was unaware of itself and never gross; on the
other hand, she had a quality of fastidiousness that human beings rarely
have, but animals often. He could only modestly wonder how he had ever been
so confident of winning her, because now that he had done so she seemed to
him so much more desirable that it was almost as if he had to keep on
winning, or else, in some incomprehensible way, to risk losing. And when he
returned to Browdley that was still the case. He had hoped, after marriage,
to concentrate more than ever on his Council work and on study for the
university examination—to make up for such splendidly lost time with a
vengeance; yet to his slight dismay there came no relief at all from a
nagging preoccupation that he could not grapple with, much less analyse. He
found it actually harder to concentrate on the Cambridge Modern History,
harder to generate that mixture of indignation and practical energy that had
just barely begun to move the mountains of opposition to everything he wanted
to do as town councillor. It was as if the fire with which she consumed him
were now seeking to consume other fires.

For instance, her sudden change of attitude in regard to Browdley, and her
na ve question, within a few weeks of their return: "George, I've been
thinking—couldn't you do your sort of work somewhere else?"

"Somewhere else? You mean move into a better part of the town?"

"No, I mean move altogether. Out of Browdley."

He was too astonished to say much at first. "Well, I don't know..." And
then he smiled. "That's just what I suggested to you once, and you said you'd
rather stay here."

"I said I'd rather stay at Stoneclough. But I haven't got Stoneclough
now."

"Well, I've still got the Guardian and my Council position. Wouldn't be so
easy for me to give all that up."

"You think it would be hard to find a newspaper or a Council job in some
other town?"

"Aye, that's true too. But what I said is just what I meant. It wouldn't
be easy for me to give up Browdley."

She was not the sort of woman to say 'Not even to please ME?'—and
although he did not think it was in her mind, he knew it was rather
uncomfortably in his own.

"It's probably silly of me, George, even to ask you."

"No, I wouldn't call it silly—it's just not practical. Of course I
can understand how you feel about the place, but surely it's easier to put up
with now than it used to be when you worked at the Library?"

"Oh, it isn't a question of that. I can put up with anything. I did,
didn't I? It's just that—somehow—I don't think Browdley will
bring us any luck."

"Oh, come now—superstitions—"

"I know—I can't argue it out. It's just a feeling I have."

He laughed with relief, for the unreasonable in those days did not seem to
him much of an adversary. "All right, maybe you won't have to have it long,
because I've a bit of news to tell you..."

He told her then what he had known for several days—that the
parliamentary member for Browdley was expected to retire on account of age
within a few months. When this happened there would be a by- election and
George would be a possible candidate; if he won, he would be obliged to live
in London during parliamentary sessions, so Livia would enjoy frequent
escapes from Browdley that way.

She was much happier at the thought of this, and soon also for another
reason: she was going to have a baby.

* * * * *

The member for Browdley duly applied for the Chiltern
Hundreds; the writ
for the by-election was issued; George was selected as his party's candidate,
and the campaign opened in the summer of the following year. George's
opponent was a rich local manufacturer who had made a fortune during the war
and declined to entertain the notion that this was in any way less than his
deserts. His party's majority at the coupon election just after the Armistice
had been large, but already there were signs of a change in the national
mood, especially in the industrial areas, and it was generally agreed that
George had a chance if he would put up a fight for it. And there certainly
seemed no one likelier or better able to do so.

When George looked back on his life from later years, it was this period
—those few weeks and months—that shone conspicuously, because
upon Livia, always unpredictable, pregnancy seemed to confer such deep
contentment. George then realized the power she had over him, for immediately
he felt freed for effort just when effort was most needed. Never did he work
harder than during that election campaign; every morning, after a few
necessary jobs in the newspaper office, he would leave for a whole day of
canvassing, meetings at street corners and factory gates, culminating in some
'monster rally' in the evening that would send him home tired but still
exhilarated, long after midnight. Usually Livia would then have a meal
awaiting him, which he would gulp down avidly while he told her of the
manifold triumphs of the day. In her own way she seemed to share his
enthusiasm, if only on account of what could happen after his victory, for it
was already planned that they would rent a house in some inner London suburb
—Chelsea, perhaps—where she could live with her baby while George
made a name for himself in Parliament. Who could set limits to such a future?
Well, the electorate of Browdley could; and that, of course, sent him out in
the morning to work harder than ever, with Livia still in bed and himself
strangely refreshed after no more than a few hours of snatched sleep. He had
never been so happy, had never felt so physically enriched, or so alert
mentally. Things that had seemed a little wrong between him and Livia just
after their marriage had worked themselves right—or something had
happened, anyway; perhaps it was just that they had needed time to get
properly used to each other.

One thing, naturally, had to be postponed for a while—his studies
for the university degree. But of course he could pursue them just as easily
—nay, more so—in London later on. And it would be an added pride
to put B.A. after his name when he could already put M.P.

Gradually during those busy weeks Browdley's long rows of drab four-
roomed houses took on splashes of colour from election cards in most of the
windows—George's colours were yellow, his opponent's blue. The latter's
slogan was "Put Wetherall In and Keep Higher Taxes Out". George, however,
struck a less mercenary note. "A Vote for Boswell is a Vote for Your
Children's Future" proclaimed his cards, banners, and posters.

(George would remember that one day.)

But he really meant it. He told the voters of Browdley exactly what he
intended to do if they should choose him to represent them; he mixed the
dream and the business in a way that was something rather new to the town,
and could be both praised and attacked as such. He had plans, not merely
promises, for slum clearance, education, medical insurance, and relief of
unemployment; and (to redress the balance, as it were) he had visions, not
merely opinions, about international trade, India, the League of Nations,
currency, and world peace. He was eager, cheerful, spontaneous, sincere, and
a little na ve. He battled his opponent trenchantly, yet with rough-spun
humour that took away most of the sting; it was another of George's special
techniques, and he had already become rather expert at it. "I don't like to
hear Mr. Wetherall attacked because he made a lot of money during the war,"
he would say. "Let's be fair to the man—he couldn't help it.
(Laughter.) It wasn't his brains that did it. (Laughter.) He didn't even have
to try to do it. (More laughter.) The money just came rolling in, because we
hadn't got the laws or the taxes to stop it. So don't blame poor Mr.
Wetherall. Blame the laws and the tax system of this country that enabled one
man to become half a millionaire while others had to fight in the trenches
for a shilling a day. And let's get things changed so that it can't happen
again. (Cheers.) But of course you mustn't expect Mr. Wetherall to vote for
any such change. After all, why should he? (Laughter.)..." And so on.
Political prophets tipped George as the winner, but whether or not, Browdley
had certainly never enjoyed a more bracing political contest.

Election day dawned unseasonably windy and wet, which was his first item
of bad luck, for the other side had more cars to take voters to and from the
polling stations. He left his house for the central committee rooms at an
early hour and was kept busy all day with routine matters; meanwhile, as the
rain increased, his spirits sank a little. His agent, Jim Saunders, was
already giving him revised last-minute opinions that it would be 'a damned
near thing'.

Polling closed at eight o'clock, and an hour later the count began in the
Town Hall. George paced up and down amongst the green-baize- covered trestle
tables, keeping his eyes on the mounting piles of ballot papers; his opponent
was absent, preferring to spend the anxious hours more convivially in a hotel
room across the street. The atmosphere in the Town Hall became tenser as it
also grew thicker with tobacco smoke and the smell of wet mackintoshes.

Towards midnight most of the ballot-boxes had been brought in from
outlying districts and half the count was over, with George leading by a
narrow margin. Watching the proceedings, he found it hard to realize that his
fate lay in those slips of paper—his own fate and Livia's. And then,
whimsically, he thought of his election slogan—"A Vote for Boswell is a
Vote for Your Children's Future". It was a vote for HIS children's future,
anyhow, he reflected.

By midnight he knew what his fate was, for the last few ballot- boxes,
drawn from the suburban fringe where mostly professional and retired people
lived, had contained a heavy preponderance of votes for Wetherall. The final
figures were not even close enough to justify a recount; George had lost the
election by a hundred and forty-eight.

As in a trance he received the impact of the news and went through the
ritual prescribed for defeated candidates on such occasions. He stepped out
on the balcony to make a short speech to his supporters, congratulated and
shook hands with the victor, seconded a vote of thanks to the returning
officer; it was all over by one o'clock in the morning, and the rain had not
stopped.

As he was leaving the Town Hall Jim Saunders handed him a throw- away
leaflet printed in the opposition colours that had been given eleventh-hour
circulation throughout the town.

George scanned it over and shrugged more indifferently than he felt. "Poor
stuff, Jim. And not even true. I'll bet it's not libellous, though."

"I wasn't thinking of that. But there's a good many voters it may have
influenced."

It was an artfully worded suggestion that George had secured a municipal
appointment for his wife—concealing the all-important fact that he had
not even met her till after she took the job.

"It's the sort of thing that swings votes," Saunders went on. "Shouldn't
wonder if you'd have been in but for this."

"I doubt it, Jim..." And all the way home George kept telling himself that
he doubted it.

Not till he turned the corner of Market Street and saw the familiar
printing-office (now plastered, and how ironically, with adjurations to 'Vote
for Boswell') did he contemplate the really worst penalty of failure, and
that was having to tell Livia. He wondered if she would already have
heard.

When he entered the house he waited to hear her voice, but only Becky came
up to him rather forlornly; and then he saw a note on the table. It told him
she had had to call the doctor early that evening and had been sent to the
hospital.

* * * * *

An hour later he sat at her bedside, realizing that for a
new and far
happier reason this was one of the memorable days of his life. His child was
born, prematurely, but thrivingly—a boy. And as he looked first at his
son, and then at Livia, a great tenderness enveloped him, so that he took her
hand and could not find words for anything in his heart or mind.

"I didn't want you to come earlier," she said weakly. "I wouldn't let them
tell you because I knew you'd be busy... Is it over yet?"

"Why... don't you know?" He realized afterwards that he had doubtless been
left the job of breaking the bad news gently, but it seemed so trivial then
that he answered outright and almost casually: "Aye, it's all over. I lost.
By a hundred and forty- eight..."

"You LOST?" He was still so happy that the look of disappointment on her
face startled him, especially when she added: "No luck, George. I said so,
didn't I?"

"LUCK? Why, isn't THIS luck?" And he pointed to the child.

* * * * *

Of course his own personal disappointment returned, though
he knew he
would not have felt it so keenly but for hers. She had, and always had, that
curious capacity to weight or lift his mood with her own, to give him peace
or no-peace at will. In his own mind the loss of the election need not have
been tragic; after all, he was still young, and there would be other chances
—possibly within a short time. But she made it seem tragic by the way
she regarded it, and he, as if in defence of Browdley against this attitude,
plunged anew into work for the town.

Foremost was his plan to stir some civic spirit among the richer citizens.
There were no millionaires, but a few who were well off, and one was Richard
Felsby, partner of Livia's father and grandfather in the days when the firm
had been Channing and Felsby. George had never been able to understand what
exactly the trouble was between Livia and the old man, perhaps a family feud
of some kind, certainly no concern of his own; and since Richard was over
eighty, ailing, a bachelor, and the owner of some land on Browdley's
outskirts that would make a fine municipal park if given to the town, George
called on him one evening—quite prepared to be kicked out
unceremoniously, but unwilling to neglect even a hundred- to-one chance.

Richard Felsby, dressing-gowned, night-capped, and from a bedroom
armchair, astonished him by saying, during their first minute of
conversation: "Let's not waste time, Boswell... When ye married Livia, ye
married a problem, and it's not a bit of use comin' to me about it."

"But—" George protested, and then let the old man have his say,
since the saying might be of interest.

"And neither of ye need think ye're going to get a penny o' MY money,
because I'm leavin' it all to Sarah."

George did not even know who Sarah was, and perhaps his look showed it,
for Richard went on: "Sarah looked after Livia and her mother and father and
grandmother and grandfather for the best part of sixty years... and where
d'ye think she'd be now but for me?... Why, in the workhouse. That's all
Livia cared. I know the woman's stone-deaf and cranky and no beauty either,
but she deserved better than to be left stranded when Livia ran off to marry
you."

"I never knew that," George gasped.

"Aye, and I don't suppose ye know a good many other things. But it's the
truth, and ye can tell her so. Sarah gets my money, and if ye've come to talk
me into anything else it's not a bit of use."

George then felt that his simplest disclaimer was to tell the old man
frankly what he HAD come for, and now it was the latter's turn to be
astonished. It had clearly never occurred to him that he owed anything to the
town, and George's suggestion that he did so roused a host of vaguely
associated antagonisms—to mollycoddling and spoon-feeding and high
taxes and socialist agitators and what not. But the odd thing was that as the
interview proceeded, Richard Felsby found himself rather liking George
personally. (He was not the first to fall under that spell, or the last
either.) And when George rose to go, he grunted: "It's all a pack of
nonsense, Boswell. This boom that's on now isn't going to last, and when it's
over Browdley'll need jobs, not parks."

"So you won't let go any of that land, Mr. Felsby?"

"Not a yard, except at a fair price... But ye can stay and have a drink,
if ye like."

"Thanks, but I don't drink."

"Just as well, because the drink ye'd have got here is tea... I've often
caught chaps that way. To my mind it's a misuse of the word that it should
only apply to alcohol... So ye're a teetotaller, eh?"

George nodded.

"Teetotal family?"

"Not all of 'em. My Uncle Joe drank plenty."

"The black sheep?"

"Maybe, but I liked him better than some of the white ones."

"Ye did?... Sit down, lad, and what about a cup?"

George accepted, and then had a chance to verify that Sarah was indeed as
had been described. Meanwhile Richard Felsby, who had enjoyed no such
congenial human contact since the death of his best friend, Dr. Whiteside,
made the most of the occasion and became almost garrulous. He admitted that
he wasn't a big "giver" (George had known this already), but when he did
give, he said he liked to suit his own ideas—as when, for instance, he
had offered an annual prize to the Browdley Grammar School for the boy who
achieved "the best all-round lack of distinction". "It was the prize I'd have
won myself when I was there," he chuckled asthmatically, "but they wouldn't
even let me offer it." It appeared, too, that sometimes he amused himself by
sending cheques for small sums to people momentarily headlined in the news
—the farmer who refused to let a fashionable Hunt cross his fields, the
postman's wife with her second set of triplets, and so on. "I reckon ye think
I'm a queer sort of chap," he added, after these confessions.

"Aye," answered George, unconsciously giving his voice a riper Browdley
burr to match the other's. "Ye're queer enough. And I suppose ye think I'M
queer for wanting Browdley to have a park?"

"Oh, to blazes with the park—are we on that again?... I hear ye've
got a baby."

George nodded. "A boy."

"Let's hope it takes after you, then. Because I'll tell ye this, Boswell,
the Channings are queerer than you and me combined... Must ye go?"

"Getting late," said George, with a smile.

"Drop in again some time."

"Aye... but I won't promise not to mention that park."

* * * * *

George did not tell Livia about his visit, because he felt
it would not
please her, however well he could justify it. And a few weeks later he
visited Richard again, partly in case there was any change of mind about the
park, but chiefly because he was passing the house and was touched by a
sudden vision of the old man's loneliness in that upstairs room with no one
to talk to but a deaf servant. A moment later, having acted on impulse, he
was touched again by the evident warmth of Richard's welcome.

"Sit down, lad, and make yourself at home... See this?" And he waved, of
all things, a cheque he had been busy writing. "I'm givin' it away for
charity... Doesn't it make your mouth water?"

George laughed, while Richard went on to explain that he was sending it to
a man he did not know, but whose name and address had appeared in that
morning's paper—some fellow who had grown a hollyhock taller than his
house. "Mebbe ye'll drop it in the post for me when ye go, Boswell. He'll get
a nice surprise when he opens my letter tomorrow... Well, what are ye starin'
at me for? D'ye think I'm daft? Or don't ye like hollyhocks taller than
houses?"

"I like 'em all right," answered George, "and houses too. I'll count it as
one of your BETTER benefactions. Why didn't ye make it a bit more, though?
What's a pound from you?"

Whereat Richard enjoyed the best laugh he had had for years, for despite
his reputation for being tight with money, no one had dared to hint it to his
face until George, in sheer na veté, stumbled into doing so. But it made such
an instant hit that George was never quite sure afterwards whether he kept it
up out of candour or to give the old man more fun.

For he formed quite a habit of dropping in to see Felsby, whose house was
not far from the Town Hall. The visits did not have to be long ones, and
George enjoyed their brevity as much as the outspokenness of what was said on
both sides.

"The trouble with you, George, is that ye think too much of yourself. I
always thought ye did, ever since ye got on the Council. I've sacked hundreds
of better men than you for a tenth of the things ye've said to me
tonight."

"Aye," retorted George. "And ye'd sack me too, if I was an employee of
yours. But I'm not. My father was, though, for the best part of a lifetime.
Or the worst part, whichever way ye look at it."

That sort of thing...

(George reflected afterwards that the old man must like it, or he would
get offended; but then it occurred to him that he would have got offended
already, if he had thought that George really meant what he said, but he
doubtless supposed he didn't. Yet George DID, in a way, and knowing this,
found himself up against a familiar dilemma: that to say what you mean
without ever offending people is usually to say what you mean without making
them believe you mean what you say—and what was the use of that? Well,
maybe SOME use, sometimes. For, as a victim expressed HIS side of it once:
"George tells you what a bastard you are, and you laugh, and then after he's
gone you suddenly say to yourself—'Of course, George was only
joking—it's a good job he doesn't really know I AM a bit of a
bastard!'")

Richard was frank enough also. He once said: "George, I'm sorry for ye,
married to a Channing. Her father was no good, and her mother wasn't much
better, and the life she lived at Stoneclough that last year before he died
—well, it was no Sunday-school picnic, believe me."

It was impossible to resent this, in its context, yet George felt impelled
to answer defensively: "Oh, Livia's all right"—before curiosity made
him add: "She had a bad time, you mean?"

Richard Felsby said impressively: "There's only one man who could have
told you—and that's Dr. Whiteside, and he's dead. He never told me, for
that matter—but I knew how he felt, because I remember what he said
when he got news of her father's death—'Thank God,' he said, 'for
everybody's sake.'... Well, well—maybe that's more than I should have
passed on. But I'll tell ye this, George—the Channing blood's had a
streak of moonshine in it lately. That's what made me leave the firm. I found
I was getting too sensible for it."

"You're not as sensible as you think," retorted George, allowing the
conversation to become bantering again. He guessed it would be good policy
not to press his enquiries at this stage, especially as the old man would
doubtless return to the subject at a later meeting and tell all he knew.
George had had enough experience of wheedling information to know that an air
of not too much concern is the best wheedler. And besides, he must keep in
mind the other object of his wheedling. So he added, still banteringly: "If
ye WERE sensible ye'd give me that land for a park. Think of the taxes ye'd
save."

At which the old man shook and spluttered with merriment to a degree that
quite possibly imposed a strain on his heart.

* * * * *

Suddenly it all came to an end.

Livia found out about the more or less regular visits and flew into the
kind of tantrum that George had certainly not anticipated; if he had, he
would doubtless not have called on Felsby in the first place. He had been
prepared for her coolness over the association, but he was amazed to discover
how profoundly the whole thing must matter to her. "Oh, George," she cried,
as if she had discovered him in some mortal sin, "how COULD you do it? I HATE
him—I don't want to have anything to do with him. You knew that. And to
think that secretly—all the time—so that I only got to hear of it
by accident—"

Perhaps because he did feel a little guilty in that one respect, he was
more than usually ready to defend himself. "Nay, let's keep a sense of
proportion, Livia. No harm's been done to anyone just because I've had a few
chats with an old man—even if you do count him an enemy for some reason
I've never been told about. Besides, I went to him chiefly on business
—I wanted him to give the town a park."

"Oh, George, what does a park matter?"

"Just what HE said."

"The main thing is, you must never, NEVER go there again."

George stared at her, for the first time in his life, with a look of
disenchantment.

"I couldn't promise that, Livia."

"WHAT?" And she was facing him, the issue suddenly alive between them.

"I'm sorry, Livia. I don't like to upset you, but I've got to think of the
town's interests. If you know what I mean."

"Oh yes, I know. I didn't know—but that's unimportant. It makes no
difference."

(She knew what? What was it she hadn't known? What was unimportant? What
made no difference? He was by now accustomed to the mental gymnastics that
her talk often demanded; she spoke in a sort of verbal shorthand, so that one
had to grab at the meaning as it flashed by, and even then not be sure of
getting it. Basically, he felt it to be a species of natural arrogance; she
used the dotted line of her own immediate thoughts and expected others to
follow her without that advantage.)

He said again: "I'm sorry." But in his look there was still the absence of
any surrender.

She returned that look for an instant, then quietly went out of the
room.

Yet left alone, he had no sense of victory—only a feeling of
emptiness that made him wonder if the issue had been worth facing at all.

Would he, despite the stand he had taken, visit Richard Felsby again?

The next morning, after a troubled night of thinking the matter over, he
was still unsure, and to the end of his life he did not know what he would
have done eventually; for on the evening of that next day Richard Felsby died
peacefully in his sleep.

A few weeks later George happened to meet Ferguson, the lawyer who was
settling the estate. "Too bad, George," he commented. "You nearly pulled it
off."

"Pulled what off?"

"You nearly got that park." Then Ferguson explained in confidence that a
few days before he died Felsby had talked about leaving some land as a gift
to the town, but on one condition—"and this'll make you sit up,
George—on condition that it's called 'The Channing Memorial Park'!
You'd have had a fine job persuading Browdley to THAT—some of them have
enough to remember the name Channing by, without a park... Perhaps it's just
as well he didn't have time to give me definite instructions."

"Aye," said George, "it'd have put me in a tight corner." But then he
began to laugh. "And that's just where he wanted me, the old devil..."

Ferguson went on: "As matters stand, his housekeeper gets the lot, and
SHE'S made a will leaving everything to a training college for Methodist
ministers... So there goes the last of the Channing and Felsby fortunes,
George—and you can add that to your lecture on 'Browdley Past and
Present'!"

* * * * *

The child was called Martin (Livia's choice) and took after
George, in
appearance at least, enough to have given the old man a measure of sardonic
satisfaction. During the first year of his life Martin grinned far oftener
than he cried, almost as if he knew he had been born on the day his father
only narrowly missed becoming a member of Parliament; and when George grinned
back, it was as if to say: Don't worry, I'll manage it next time. But
political affairs are incalculable, and as events developed, it began to seem
highly unlikely that any next time would come soon.

This revived Livia's plea that George should pack up and leave Browdley.
He tried to avoid serious argument on the issue, yet it was clear his
attitude had not changed, and there grew a hard core of deadlock between
them, always liable to jar nerves and send off sparks if any subordinate
differences occurred. They did occur, as in all married lives; nevertheless,
by and large, Councillor and Mrs. Boswell could have been called a fairly
happy couple—except on those few occasions when they could have been
called Councillor and Mrs. Boswell. For Livia's dislike of the town made her
scorn the slightest official recognition of her existence. After a few
experiments, she declined to attend civic functions so persistently that
George ceased to ask her, and in the end she was not even invited. This must
have helped rather than hindered him, for Livia was still unpopular in
Browdley, especially when the world-wide post-war depression brought sudden
distress to the town. It was easy to choose a local name as a scapegoat
—easier than to figure what the whole thing was about. And who COULD
figure what the whole thing was about, anyway?

George evidently thought he could, for on a certain day in July, 1920, he
wrote the following in one of his Guardian editorials:

"The signing by Germany of the protocol containing the disarmament terms
of the Allies marks another landmark on the long road towards world recovery.
There are some who profess to be concerned about the future of thousands of
workers in the arms industry if production is cut down to a minimum; but to
that na ve misgiving every economist and social worker has a ready answer.
For the real wealth of the world consists, not merely in things created by
hand or brain, but in things so created THAT ARE WORTH CREATING. For this
reason we may regard yesterday's event as a step not only towards peace, but
BECAUSE of that, towards PROSPERITY."

George himself needed a step towards prosperity as much as anyone, for his
paper was losing both circulation and advertising revenue, and he found
himself suddenly on the edge of a precipice which a financially shrewder man
would have foreseen. Everything then happened at once, as it usually does;
people to whom he owed money (the bank, the newsprint company, the income-tax
authorities) demanded payment; those who owed George money, and there were
hundreds of them, made excuses for further delay. In this crisis Livia
stepped into the breach and proved herself, to George's utter astonishment, a
thoroughly capable business woman. The first thing she did was to produce
some sort of order in the printing-office, where Will Spivey's slackness had
held sway for years. By making Will's life a misery she pared expenses to a
minimum and increased the margin of profit on whatever small printing orders
came in. Then she began a campaign to secure at least part payment of what
was owing, while at the same time she made contact with creditors and
persuaded most of them to have patience. Altogether it was an excellent job
of reorganization, carried out so expeditiously that George made the mistake
of supposing that she enjoyed doing it.

"The fact is, I'm not cut out for business," he admitted, after
congratulating her on having saved the Guardian from bankruptcy.

"And do you think I am? Do you think I LIKE asking Browdley people
for favours? Do you really think I'm doing this for your sake or my sake or
for your old Guardian?"

There was another thing that she did. It so happened that Councillor
Whaley carried influence at the bank where the Guardian had an overdraft, and
with this in mind, Livia readily agreed to something she had long balked at,
and that was simply to have Councillor Whaley to tea. She had always said she
knew Whaley disliked her and she had no desire to meet him, and George had
always urged that Whaley was his friend and that she ought at least to give
him the chance to change his mind about her. Her sudden surrender on the
matter brought joy to George that was unmarred by the slightest suspicion of
an ulterior motive, and when the day came and Tom Whaley arrived (for a 'high
tea', according to Browdley fashion), George was sheerly delighted by the
result. It was almost ludicrous to see a cynical old chap like Tom falling so
obviously under her spell, yet no wonder, for George thought he had never
seen her in such a fascinating humour—warm, gay, sympathetic. Tom
—it was his weakness as well as George's—liked to talk, and Livia
not only listened, but gave him continual openings, making his chatter seem
at times even brilliant (which it never was); and as George looked on,
quietly satisfied that all was going so well, he could not help adoring her
with such intensity that he wondered what exactly caused the feeling in him.
Would it have been the same had there been some fractional mathematical
difference in the angle of her nose and forehead? His experience of women
before Livia had been limited, but enough for him to know or think he knew
what sex-attraction was; yet now, honestly though he tried, he could neither
confirm nor deny that what he felt for Livia had anything to do with sex. It
puzzled him enormously and quite happily as he sat there, staring at her face
across the crumpets and cold ham.

When, having stayed much longer than they had expected, Whaley put on his
overcoat to go, he seized a chance to whisper to George at the street door:
"George—she's a winner—whether she wins elections for ye or not!"
He was in a mellow, sentimental, patriarchal mood—so utterly had Livia
bewitched him.

A moment later George, still beaming from the effect of his friend's
remark, found Livia on her knees on the hearthrug, warming her hands at the
fire. Her face was turned away from him as he approached; he began
cheerfully: "Ah, that's been a grand time! You should have heard what Tom
thinks about you—he just told me—"

All at once he stopped, because she had turned round, and the look on her
face was as startling as her first words.

"Oh, George, what a BORE! Such a SILLY old man! How can you possibly
endure him? That awful, high-pitched voice, and the way he talks, talks,
TALKS—"

George gasped incredulously: "You mean you don't LIKE him? You don't like
Tom Whaley?"

"What is there to like?"

"But—but—he's a good fellow—he's against me on the
Council, I know that—but he's really all right, Tom is—"

"George, he's dull and he's pompous and he loves the sound of his own
voice. And he WILL go on explaining the same thing over and over again. I
thought I should have screamed while he was telling me the difference between
the Local Government Board and the Ministry of Health—"

"He's one of my best friends, anyhow."

"Oh, George, I'm sorry... maybe I was in the wrong mood."

"You didn't seem to be."

"Couldn't you see I was pretending?"

No; he hadn't seen it. He said, anxious to ease matters: "Well, if you
were, I appreciate that much. It was nice of you to give such a good
impression."

Not till long afterwards did he guess why she had done so, but Whaley's
visit undoubtedly led to a second social occasion, far less pleasant, that
showed how much further she was prepared to go. It began by her asking George
if he would meet some friends of hers, Mr. and Mrs. Wallington by name, for
dinner one evening in Mulcaster. It seemed she had picked up a chance
acquaintance with Mrs. Wallington in a Mulcaster dress shop, and George, who
thought it odd that he should be dragged into it, demurred at first, but on
being reminded of how hospitably she had behaved towards Tom Whaley,
consented on one condition—that he himself should be the host. "Then if
I don't like 'em I don't have to invite 'em back," he explained, with sturdy
if not too flattering independence.

So in due course Livia took him to a Mulcaster restaurant where the
appointment had been arranged. There he was presented, not only to the
couple, but to an extra man, and also to the revelation that all of them
seemed to know Livia far better than he had anticipated. Although he was
usually able to get on well with strangers from the outset, he felt curiously
ill at ease that evening, and as it progressed he became less and less happy
for a variety of reasons, one of which was quite humiliating—he didn't
think he would have enough money to pay the bill, especially as they were all
ordering expensive drinks. But apart from that, he found none of his previous
pleasure in witnessing Livia's social success; it was one thing to introduce
her to a friend of his own and watch the magic begin to operate, but to see
the fait accompli in the shape of already established friendships with
strangers was another matter. He did not think it was jealousy that he felt,
but rather a sense of annoyance that, after sneering at Whaley, she should
show her preference for men like those two. For they were both of the
blustery, aggressive type, especially the one who was not the husband and had
not been invited. His name was Mangin, and from certain boastful references
George gathered that he had lately made a good deal of money in the
advertising business. There was a cold swagger about him that met more than
its match in Livia's repartee, but George himself could not come to terms
with it, and was made even less comfortable by his wife's peculiar ability to
do so.

As the dinner went on and more drinks fed the bluster, he fell into a glum
silence that became equally a torture to maintain or to try to break. He was
relieved when Mangin made a move to leave, mentioning a train he must catch;
but then came the problem of the bill; why on earth had Livia chosen such a
swank establishment, and would such a place be satisfied with his personal
cheque? He was trying rather clumsily to signal the waiter and learn the
worst when Mangin shouted: "What the deuce are you bothering about, Boswell?
Everything's taken care of at source—don't you know me yet? Anyhow,
your wife does—that's the main thing..." Whereupon, with a lordly
gesture amidst ensuing laughter, he intercepted the waiter whom George had
summoned and ostentatiously tipped him a pound note, then adding to George:
"By the way, Boswell, I'd like a word with you if you can spare a
moment."

George could say nothing; to argue without enough in his pocket to pay the
bill would have been even more humiliating. In his confusion he somehow found
himself leaving the table and being piloted by Mangin into the restaurant
lobby.

"So you're a newspaper man, Boswell?"

George nodded, still inclined to be speechless.

"Know much about advertising?"

"Advertising?... Er... Well, I take in advertising, naturally."

"Ever WRITTEN ads?"

"Oh yes, my customers often ask me to help them—"

"I mean big stuff—campaign advertising—things like patent
medicines—"

"No, I can't say I—"

Mangin threw a half-crown into the plate on the cloakroom counter and
began putting on his overcoat.

"Well, I'll tell you what... You don't seem to have had any experience,
but I'll give you a chance... start at six pounds a week for the first three
months and we'll see what happens... But you'll have to LEARN, Boswell, and
learn plenty if you want to stay in the game."

"But I thought you wanted to give it up! Wasn't that the idea... to try
somewhere else?"

George suddenly flushed. "There must have been a mistake."

"MISTAKE, eh? Looks like it..." Mangin smirked as he signalled the doorman
for a taxi. "Better have that out with Livia... I've got to rush for my
train... G'bye."

George did not go back to the table immediately; he calmed himself first,
then discovered (as he had hoped) that the rest of the party was breaking up.
He murmured his goodbyes, and could not find words to address Livia during
the first few hundred yards of their walk together along the pavement from
the restaurant. Eventually she broke the silence herself. "Don't be so angry,
George, just because Mr. Mangin paid for the dinner. You know you only asked
the other two—and then all those drinks... they wouldn't have felt free
to have what they wanted if they'd thought you were paying for
everything."

"Why not? How do they know what I earn? I'm not poor just because I can't
afford to buy champagne cocktails."

He said, half to himself: "Seems to me there's a more important matter
than the one we're discussing."

She answered eagerly: "I hope so. I don't know what Mr. Mangin said to you
outside. I was afraid you hadn't given him much of an impression of how
clever you are—because you ARE clever, George—I know you are
—in your own way."

"Thanks," he retorted. "And perhaps you'll tell me why in God's name you
should care WHAT impression I make on a man like that?"

"Only because he might find you some work. I thought it was a stroke of
luck when I met somebody who knew him—he's very influential in the
newspaper world, so Mrs. Wallington told me. And it would get us out of
Browdley—that is, if he DID say he could find you something."

George gritted his teeth and replied: "Aye, he said he could. He offered
me six pounds a week in his London office—provided I learned
enough."

"Oh, but George, that's—that's WONDERFUL! You don't make nearly so
much out of the Guardian—not lately, anyhow."

"Livia..." He stopped suddenly in the street and faced her. "Do you really
mean you'd have me give up my own paper and all the work I do on the Council
—just to have a job under a man like that? And WHAT a job—
writing patent-medicine ads... Livia, would you REALLY have me do that?"

He knew what her answer would have been but for the look on his face,
which made her temporize: "Maybe it isn't exactly the life you'd choose. But
I don't choose the life I have, either... And why keep on saying 'a
man like that'? They can't all be men like you."

He began walking again. "Livia, let's not quarrel. You did a silly thing,
but I daresay you meant well. You asked this man to find me a job—you
made yourself agreeable to him—you were pretending just as you were
with Tom Whaley, weren't you?" His eagerness to think so fanned a warmth
between them. "I believe you really thought you were doing the best for
me."

"No... I was thinking about Martin more than you. That was the real
reason."

Then she told him the bare economic facts of his own household (which he
had hardly guessed, so preoccupied had he been with the bare economic facts
of the whole town)—the fact, for instance, that sometimes lately she
hadn't been able to afford the kind of food and clothing the child most
needed, and had to make do with the second best. Though this was a condition
common all over Browdley, and formed the subject-matter of countless speeches
he made, he was nevertheless shocked to find it so close to his own personal
affairs—not because he thought he ought to have been exempt from what
afflicted others, but simply because it had never occurred to him. And once
it did, OF COURSE, something must be done about it. But what COULD be done?
—persisted Livia, coolly stemming his indignation. It was no use her
asking for more money because she knew, and none better, that the Guardian
didn't make it; she knew also there were no more business economies possible.
Nor were there domestic ones; she herself did all the house-work, and some of
the office-work too, now that she knew how careless Will Spivey was. As she
very calmly explained, it had become her honest opinion after George's
electoral defeat that it would be a wise thing to leave Browdley, even apart
from her own desire to do so.

"But—my Council work, Livia—"

"Where's it getting you?"

"I don't know, but I've not been defeated in THAT... YET. I don't have all
my own way—after all, who does?—but I am ON the Council, pretty
safely on too, judging by my last majority. And the job's worth doing. I know
you're not interested in it—I don't ask you to be, but do believe me
when I say this—IT'S WORTH DOING... Livia, don't hinder me in
it—even if you can't help me... And as for the extra things you need
for Martin, you shall have them. Of course you shall—I had no idea you
were doing without... I'd rather go without everything myself—"

"But you can't, George. You don't drink or smoke—there's nothing you
could give up... except Browdley. THAT'S your hobby, or your luxury
—whatever you'd rather call it. And I don't say you're not entitled to
it—you personally, that is—everyone has his own tastes. But what
sort of a place is it for a child to grow up in?"

But that only gave him his own private cue for optimism, as she would have
known if she had attended more of his meetings. For he answered, beginning
quietly but with rising confidence as he proceeded: "Not such a bad place as
it used to be... and I'll make it better. You wait. You don't know all the
plans I have. And they're not just dreams—they're practical. I don't
tell you much—because I know you don't want to hear about it— I
WISH you did... but never mind that. Mark my words, though, I'll DO things
with this town. I'll get the slums off the map. I'll build schools... and a
new hospital... I'll... well, laugh at me if you like—I don't
care."

She did not laugh, but she smiled as she took his arm. "I wouldn't care
either, but for Martin. You'd do anything for Browdley—I'd do anything
for him."

"So would I too—I just don't see any conflict between them. Don't
you think I'm as devoted to the kid as you are?"

He was; but nevertheless in his heart he looked forward to the time when
Martin would be a little older—old enough for the friendly
father-and-son relationship to develop, old enough also to start the kind of
education on which George set so much store. Whereas for Livia every tomorrow
seemed a future far enough ahead and complete in itself; it was almost as if
she hoarded the days of babyhood, unwilling to lose the separate richness of
each one.

* * * * *

She was wrong, though, in saying there was nothing he could
give up. There
was, and he gave it up. She never knew, because she had never known anything
about it at all. The fact was, after his electoral defeat George had gone
back to his earlier ambition, the university degree. The long interval he had
let pass meant digging over a good deal of old as well as new ground, but he
tackled the job, as he did all his chosen jobs, with enthusiasm. Most of the
necessary time he put in late at nights, in the room which he had now begun
to call his 'study'; and without actually telling Livia a direct lie, he
allowed her to think he was busy preparing material for the Guardian. As she
was generally asleep when he came up to bed she did not know how long he
worked; sometimes it was half the night. He had a curious unwillingness to
let her know what he still hankered after, partly because he was not sure he
would ever succeed in winning it, but chiefly out of a sort of embarrassment;
he was sure she would smile as at a grown man caught playing with a toy, for
book-learning to her was something you had forced on you during youth and
then were mercifully released from ever afterwards. She might also (a more
valid attitude) feel that if he had such time to spare it would be better
spent in trying to sustain his own precarious livelihood. Anyhow, he did not
tell her, and having not done so, it was easy to give the whole thing up
without a word to anyone in the world. There were the examination fees he
would now avoid, and he could also sell some of the expensive text-books he
had had to purchase. He did this and gave her everything thus saved,
spreading it over a period so that she needed no explanation.

But the habit of reading in his study at nights continued—in fact,
the whole habit of study continued, for it was something bigger than a mere
competitive examination that had inspired George. The fringe of scholarship
he had touched had left him with an admiration for learned men all the more
passionate because he almost never met them either in business or politics;
and there came to him, a constant vision, the memory of the dome-headed
spectacled examining professor who had been so indulgent to him about the
Pathetic Fallacy.

Perhaps Martin would grow up into a learned man—which was another
reason for not discussing the matter with Livia.

One thing, however, became both an immediate and a practical ambition
—that the boy should have a vastly different childhood from his own.
Not that his own had been cruel or vicious; merely that, in recollecting it,
he was aware of how far it had been from the ideal. Perhaps equally far from
the worst that it might have been, in Browdley, for George's father had
always had regular employment in a job that set him among the aristocracy of
cotton- mill labour—a spinner's wage being at that time more than twice
that of the lowest-paid. And though Mill Street became a byword later, it was
no worse during George's childhood than nine-tenths of Browdley; for the
Boswells, like many other families, had lived in a four-roomed bathroomless
house more because there were no others available than because they could not
have afforded better. Anyhow, Number Twenty-Four, in which George was born,
had been clean and decently furnished, and its occupants, though overcrowded,
were never without enough plain food and strong soap and good winter fuel;
they were "respectable chapel folk", moreover, which meant that their
children were nagged at without the use of technical bad language; and if the
young Boswells feared their father too much, and their father feared his
Heavenly Father, it was doubtless on general principles rather than for any
more definite reason.

Even George's early education, which was poor enough, had had a few
passable things in it; indeed, at the old-fashioned prison-like elementary
school he was taught reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic far more
thoroughly than were the youngsters in the luxurious modern school that
George persuaded the Council to build years later. But there was a drawback
to the thoroughness, for the teacher, a Mr. Rimington, was dull-witted enough
to think history and geography 'easy' subjects, and therefore somewhat to be
despised. All George learned of the former was that somebody was a 'good'
king and somebody else a 'bad' one, plus a few scraps of information such as
that Henry the Second never smiled again and that Oliver Cromwell had a wart
on his nose; while geography consisted largely of memorizing 'what belongs to
England', and of copying maps—an occupation which Mr. Rimington
approved of because it took so long and kept the class quiet. He was also
dull-witted enough to think that a boy who turned over a page during a
reading lesson without waiting for the order to do so was guilty of a serious
breach of discipline. George had been punished for this once or twice, after
which he hated and feared Mr. Rimington and formed a self-protective habit of
concentrating his attention and disengaging his intelligence whenever he
crossed the school threshold. Not till years afterwards when, as Chairman of
the Browdley Education Committee, he had the task of choosing applicants for
teaching posts, did he realize that Mr. Rimington had made himself thus
terrifying because when he first became a teacher the rougher products of
Browdley homes had terrified HIM.

And now, as the father of the product of another Browdley home, George
turned over in his mind his own childhood memories, not without a certain
nostalgia, but with a resolute determination that Martin's early life should
contain happier ones. He remembered the crowded house in Mill Street, his
mother's continual nagging (behind which he had failed to diagnose the
harassed affection that was really there), his father's doomful voice at home
and from the pulpit; the canal-bank where he sneaked off to play when his
father was at work and his mother was ill (the only time of real freedom he
enjoyed); the elementary school round the corner and Mr. Rimington's
classroom, with its torn maps and dirty walls, the smell of wet clothes and
steaming water-pipes in winter, and of sweat in summer; the slabs of
dust-laden sunlight into which he so often stared after finishing tasks
adjusted to the speed of the stupidest pupil; terrifying Mr. Rimington
himself, and the not- quite-so-terrifying headmaster, old 'Daddy' Simmons,
whose habit, fascinating to all, was to stick his little finger into his ear
and waggle furiously; and the paragraph in the tattered reading-book that
said: "Harrow is one of the great schools of England. Many famous Englishmen
went there when they were boys. Some of them carved their names on the school
desks, and these names can still be read. You must not carve your name on
your school desk, but you can make up your mind to become a famous Englishman
when you grow up..."

George's own ambitions, even if he should ever become both a member of
Parliament and a Bachelor of Arts, had never permitted themselves to soar as
far as being 'a famous Englishman'. But for Martin... why not? What obstacles
were there? Surely not boyhood in Browdley, since winning scholarships was no
harder from there than from anywhere else. Perhaps Martin might win such
scholarships—not to Harrow (for George, though he could admire some of
their products as individuals, was of the opinion that public schools
encourage snobbery), but to Oxford—or Cambridge, at least. That faint
preference in favour of Oxford was nothing but a recollection of Gladstone's
Double-First.

There came a day when Martin seemed old enough to be taken by his father
to the Browdley Town Hall, there to imbibe some vague first impression which
George could hardly seek to clarify at such an early age, but which would
later, he hoped, inspire the lad to an interest in civics, local government,
the history of his country, the parliament of man, and the federation of the
world. (After all, there was no limit to the effects of a child's first
impression.) So George held the boy lovingly in his arms in front of the
rather bad stained-glass window in the main lobby of the Town Hall—
stained glass depicting a woman carrying some sheaves of wheat in one hand
and what looked like a coffee-grinder in the other ("mechanical power", it
was supposed to represent); he hoped Martin would at least notice the bright
colours. And in due course the child's eyes rounded with all the excitement,
nay more than the excitement that George had hoped for, but unfortunately
those eyes were not on the stained glass at all.

George looked down and saw a large rat scampering across the Town Hall
floor.

He was horrified, not only that the child should have seen such a thing,
but that such a thing should exist; it argued bad drains or something—
he would certainly bring the matter up at the next meeting of the Building
Committee.

But Martin was by no means horrified. He knew nothing about rats, but
perhaps he thought that what he had seen was some extremely swift and
fascinating kind of pussy-cat (for pussy-cats WERE known to him), and with
this to wonder about, the visit to the Town Hall did indeed enshrine an
experience.

Martin loved his father less than his mother and perhaps even than Becky,
but George did not mind this, reflecting magnanimously that the balance would
be evened up later on. After all it was a result of the physical contacts of
mother and child, the domestic routine, the humble, seriocomic intimacies;
and Livia made a perfect mother—unexpectedly so, indeed. It was as if
all the nonsense that cropped up so often in her behaviour with adults was
resolved into complete naturalness between herself and Martin; she never
raised her voice to him, or was angry, or even irritated. In an odd way she
gave the appearance of being with the boy in his own world, rather than of
looking into it from hers; perhaps there was a sense in which she had never
grown up herself, or perhaps it was just the animal quality in her that
George had noticed before, that extraordinary paradoxical knack of being
shameless and fastidious at the same time. When George came upon his wife and
child romping together, he sometimes felt that to make them even aware of him
was an intrusion, the breaking of a lovely spell, and he would tiptoe away
rather than do this; for again he was able to fortify himself by thinking
that his own time would come later.

One night, as he sat with a book in his study, the impulse came to write
something that might, if anything untimely should happen, be a help to the
boy or at least a reminder that a man had once existed who had dreamed things
about him and hoped things for him; and in this mood, rare because of its
slightly melancholy flavour, George wrote:

"Everything depends on childhood, Martin, and if you ever have children of
your own, remember that, just as I, remembering my childhood, intend to make
yours good to remember. When I was a boy of seven my parents died and I went
to live with an uncle who kept a newspaper and stationery shop in Shawgate,
and living in his house gave me, I think, the germ of all my later interest
in printed things—perhaps even in politics too, because it so happened
that at the time of my arrival there was an election in progress, and Uncle
Joe, who was a Liberal (the only thing he had in common with my father), sent
me out to distribute hand-bills. All I had to do was to walk about Browdley
slipping them under doors and through letter-boxes, yet I don't think the
world was or ever could be more wonderful to me than during those few weeks.
I kept hearing about some mysterious person called the Candidate, who was
opposed in some mysterious way to another person who was called the Other
Candidate, and it seemed to me that the great battle of Good and Evil was
being fought in the streets of this town, and that I and my uncle were
soldiers fighting it. I suppose it was then, before I really knew what things
were all about, that I had the first hankering that made me later decide to
go on fighting the same sort of battle when I grew up. And if that's a
strange reason for a young man to enter politics, then perhaps it isn't the
real reason, but just the flick of a button in the signal-cabin that can send
a train to any one of a hundred different places.

"But of course all that was years ago—and in another age, because
1914 was really the end of an age. It was not only that things happened
differently before then—they happened to people who FELT them
differently. Take chapel-going, for instance. If you had walked up Mill
Street almost any Sunday forty years ago, you would have seen from the
notice-board outside that William Boswell was to preach there. That man was
my father. It would be a cold, raw night, maybe, with mist peeling off the
moors, but the folk who wanted to hear him were hard-wearing stuff; in twos
and threes they mustered, till by six o'clock the little gas-lit pitch-pine
interior was almost full. Punctually on the hour old Jack Slater went to the
pedal harmonium (the Methodists of the sect my father belonged to did not
believe in pipe-organs) and let his fingers wander over the keys according to
a style of his own, beginning softly and working up to a great roar, his feet
pounding as if he were bicycling uphill to save a life. By this time my
father had emerged from the side vestry, Bible in hand, and climbed the steps
to the pulpit, where he prayed standing (for the sect did not believe in
kneeling or stooping), and announced the opening hymn in the boomingest voice
I ever heard. He was a fine-looking man, as you can judge from the photograph
in my study; his hands were big and thick-fingered; his hair, black and
bushy, crowned a well- shaped head set firmly on broad shoulders. He never
drank, smoked, played cards, went to Browdley's one theatre (there were no
cinemas in those days), or read a novel or a Sunday newspaper. A life that
might have seemed, to an outsider, full of hardships relieved only by
boredoms, had somehow or other produced in him an air of sombre majesty that
I could never come to terms with, and I don't think my mother ever could
either. We lived at Number Twenty-Four, a four- roomed house identical with
eleven on one side of it and thirty-two on the other. Parallel with Mill
Street stood Jenny Street and Nathaniel Street, composed of houses exactly
similar. From the pavement one entered by a single step through the usually
unlatched front door; at the back, however, there was an exit through the
kitchen into a small paved yard where coal was stored and clothes were hung
to dry. I suppose there was no labour-saving device in general use in those
days except the Singer sewing machine that, surmounted by a plant pot with or
without a plant in it, stood behind the lace curtains in nearly every front
window. And there was gas-light downstairs, but not upstairs; and sanitation
had but recently progressed in Browdley from the stinking midden to the
back-to-back water-privy. There were no bathrooms, and baths were taken once
a week by heating pans of water over the kitchen fire. I give you all these
details because I hope by the time you grow up most of them will be a bit
historical—at any rate I hope Mill Street won't be in existence for you
to verify. Mind you, these houses were not slums (as they are today), but
typical dwellings of respectable working folk such as my parents were.
Respectability even imposed a toll of extra labour, for it was a sort of
ritual to wash and scrub the street-pavement from the front door to the kerb,
a task undone by the next passer-by or the next rain-shower. When my mother
was ill, as she often was during the last years of her life, this necessary
tribute to tribal gods was made on her behalf by an obliging neighbour,
though I doubt if my mother would have cared much if it hadn't been. She was
a merry little woman with an independent mind uncoupled with any
determination to stake out a claim for itself; this made her easy to get on
with and rather hopeless to rely on. My father only saw her between six and
ten in the evenings (the rest of the time he was either at work or asleep),
and during the annual holiday which they took together, always at Blackpool,
the strain of trying to seem familiar to a man whose life was so separate
from hers made her almost glad when the week was over and she could return to
the far more familiar routine of Mill Street. She loved my father well
enough, but the emotion of being in love had probably not survived courtship,
and by her thirties, with an already numerous family to look after, she had
worn her life of household drudgery into an almost comfortable groove. Every
morning in the bedroom overlooking the backs of the houses in Nathaniel
Street, the alarm-clock rang at five-fifteen; without a word my mother would
get up, come downstairs in her nightdress, and poke up the kitchen fire that
had been banked with small coal overnight. Then she would fill the kettle to
make tea, and by the time this was ready my father would be down himself,
washing at the kitchen sink and ready to leave as soon as the clock- hand
approached the half-hour. He was never exactly bad-tempered, but the fact
that they were both sleepy made them reluctant to talk; there was, anyhow,
nothing much to talk about. A few minutes after he had left the house the
whole town resounded with the crescendo of the mill 'buzzer ', but by that
time my mother was back in the warm bed, content to doze again while the
clogged footsteps rang along the pavement outside. To her this pause between
my father's departure for work and the beginning of her own was the
pleasantest time of the day—and the only time she was really alone. By
eight o'clock she was dressed and downstairs, glancing at the morning paper,
making more tea and frying a rasher of bacon for herself. Then came
attendance on us children, getting us off to school when we were old enough,
and after that a routine of house-work and the morning walk along Mill Street
to the shop at the corner where nearly everything could be bought, from
feeding- bottles to flypapers. She would chat there to Mr. and Mrs.
Molesworth while they served her; she liked a joke and an exchange of gossip,
and often, if the jokes and the gossip were good enough, she would stay
talking and laughing until other customers joined in, so that the shop became
a sort of neighbourhood club for housewives.

"Then during afternoons, if the weather were fine, she would put the
youngest of us (me, in fact) into a pram and wheel it round a few streets,
sometimes as far as the canal-bank or the Shawgate shops. Towards four she
would be home again, in good time to prepare an evening meal. Then came the
second pleasantest interval—the hour in the rocking-chair with a cup of
tea at her elbow before the children came home from school. While winter dusk
crept across the sky, and until the passing of the lamp-lighter sent a
green-yellow glow through the fanlight over the front door, my mother would
'save the gas' by poking the fire to a blaze while she rocked and sang. She
had a nice voice, small in volume but always true on the pitch, and though
most of the tunes she knew were chapel hymns with rather grim words to them,
she sang them somehow gaily and with a lilt, breaking off occasionally into a
popular song of the moment, something half-remembered from the previous
year's Blackpool holiday, or from summer performances of the Silver Prize
Band in Browdley market-place.

"My earliest recollections, Martin, were of my mother rocking and singing
like that. There was a brass rail that ran along the whole length of the
mantelshelf, and as I first remember it this rail would shine in the
firelight with the shadows darkening all around and my mother's face growing
fainter and fainter as she swung backwards and forwards; till there was only
the sound of her singing, the creak of the rocking-chair, and the simmer of
the kettle on the fire-bar... Then, all at once, I would wake up to see the
room already gas-lit, with my father standing, huge and unsmiling, in the
doorway.

"I feared my father and loved my mother and that's about the plain truth
of it. On Sundays he locked up all story-books, picture- books, and even
bricks that spelt out words; but while he was at chapel my mother used to
unlock them with a key of her own and let me play till just before his return
was expected; then she would whisk away the forbidden things with a knowing
glance that finally became a sort of joke between us.

"That is the home I was born in, Martin—not as happy as it might
have been, but not as unhappy either. So I don't complain of it, but I do
want to make YOURS happier. Which is why I intend soon to begin putting books
in your way, because the more freely and vividly you see things while you are
young, even if you can't fully understand them, the more actively they will
possess you when you grow up—especially if, in adult life, you have
hard battles to fight and bitter disappointments to face. New worlds, Martin,
are for the young to explore; later one is glad of a new room, or even of a
view from a new window..."

He put aside the fragment then, thinking he would add to it on many
succeeding nights, but he never did; perhaps the rare mood never
recurred.

* * * * *

As the post-war slump deepened and unemployment filled the
street corners
with lounging, workless men, George encountered new opposition to his Mill
Street housing scheme. Many of the cotton mills were closing down completely;
some of them went bankrupt as catastrophically as had Channing's a generation
before, but without the criminal taint, though the short-lived boom had been
pushed by speculators to limits that were almost criminal.

Among the mills that closed was the one still called Channing's, though
long operated by another firm; now, when George walked down Mill Street, the
mill loomed up, symbolically as well as actually, at the dead end of the
street. Derelict, like Stoneclough five miles away, it stood for the dead end
of what the Channings themselves had stood for. Still physically intact, with
machines inside that could spin and weave, nobody would buy it or use it,
because nobody wanted what it could do. Yet the illusion that it still had
some real value was preserved; it was regularly taxed and insured; the
Browdley police kept an eye on it, the fire department were ready to quench
the blaze should any lightning or arsonist strike. But neither did, though
lightning had once, when George was a boy, struck the Methodist chapel at the
other end of the street.

The chapel also stood, a little less forlorn than the mill—
derelict, one might say, only six days out of the seven. For Methodism in
Browdley, like the cotton trade, was not what it had been. People could not
afford to give so much to their chapels, nor were there so many Methodists.
George, walking along the street where he was born and which he planned to
rebuild for others to be born in, remembered those early days when both mill
and chapel had flourished, and when his own father, sharing the week between
them in that mystic proportion of six to one, and with his house half-way
between, had served a life-sentence longer though less stigmatized than that
of his boss.

The reason George visited the Mill Street area so often was not a
sentimental one. Indeed, it was concerned with drains rather than dreams; for
the more graphically he could report to the Council how bad the houses were
and what disease-traps they had become, the sooner he hoped to get his scheme
actually started.

He found a powerful ally in Dr. Swift, Browdley's medical officer, who had
himself issued many warnings. After a long struggle and against the bitter
opposition of a few of the town's old- established doctors, a system of free
immunization against diphtheria had been set up, enabling parents to have
their children inoculated at a municipal clinic. It was, however, impossible
to make this compulsory, and the whole question became impregnated with
political and even religious prejudices that George deplored and perhaps at
the same time aggravated by his own constant argument that it was not enough
to immunize; the CAUSES of epidemics should be tackled, and the chief was bad
housing. To which the opposition retorted that George was using the health
issue for his own political ends, that Browdley was in no greater danger than
other manufacturing towns, and that though the Mill Street area was somewhat
less salubrious than the rest, what could be done about it when local tax
rates were almost the highest in the country? And since the opposition,
fighting on this tax issue, had won seats at recent Council by-elections,
George found his slum- clearance project losing rather than gaining ground
for the time being.

He often walked with Dr. Swift through the worst of the streets, the
medical officer supplying scientific ammunition for George's continuing
struggle on the Council. For George would not give in; there was a point,
even though at times it was hard to find, beyond which he would not even
waver or compromise. Indeed, his mere mention of Mill Street had begun to
send a smile or a sigh across the Council Chamber, so well was the subject
now recognized as the bee in George's bonnet. But he did not mind. "Sooner or
later I'll wear 'em down," he assured Swift, to which the latter replied
grimly: "Better be sooner."

For it had been a hot summer. Towards the end of September over twenty
diphtheria cases appeared in and around Mill Street, mostly among young
children, of whom five quickly died.

In such an emergency Dr. Swift was given command almost without
restrictions; everything remedial was promptly organized—the
quarantining of families, wholesale inoculations, closing of schools, and so
on. The Council had adjourned for its four weeks' annual recess; many
councillors were still on holiday. But George, who had the Guardian to look
after and could not afford a holiday, was right on the spot to say 'I told
you so' to any former opponents he might meet. They were not so much his
opponents now. They all agreed, in principle, that something would have to be
done about the Mill Street area. And most agreed, in principle, with the
Guardian editorial in which George wrote:

"We must learn our lesson from this tragic visitation. Though the epidemic
has now (according to the latest assurance of our eminent and indefatigable
Medical Officer, Dr. Swift) been checked, we can never again feel secure
until preventable disease has been ABOLISHED AT ITS SOURCE. Let those
citizens who live in the more fortunate parts of Browdley and whose children
have remained unscathed, bear in mind the joint responsibility of us all for
what we allow to happen anywhere in our town, and let them do their share,
and PAY their share, in making Browdley safe for our children's future."

The only adverse comment George got about this was from a new Catholic
priest, Father Harry Wendover, of St. Patrick's, who questioned the phrase
"what we allow to happen in our town". Having been introduced to George at a
meeting, he immediately buttonholed him with the query: "Isn't that a bit
arrogant, Mr. Boswell? After all, even if you don't believe in the hand of
God, you might at least recognize that there are limits to what the hand of
Man can do."

George noted the newcomer's tall gaunt frame and deep-socketed eyes, the
strong chin and the cultured accent, and decided that here was a man to be
both respected and tackled. Rumour had already informed him that Wendover was
something of the proud cleric, so George answered, giving as well as taking
measure: "Aye, there are limits, I daresay, but in Browdley we're still a few
thousand miles away from 'em. And as for the hand of God, what makes you
think I don't believe in it?"

Wendover smiled—a rather pleasant smile. "To be frank—just
gossip. That's all a priest has to go by when he comes to a new place and
wants to find out who's who."

"So they gossip about me, do they?" And immediately George was thinking
about Livia and what sort of gossip might still be circulated about her.

"Oh, nothing malicious. In fact, you seem to be extremely popular. But
they also say that you're not a God-fearing man like your father, that you
don't often go to church or chapel, and that you're on good terms with
atheists and agnostics."

It was all spoken with a twinkle that made it inoffensive and not quite
serious, but George would not have been offended in any case. He was already
too interested in what promised to be an argument.

"Aye," he answered. "I'm on good terms with anyone who'll help me make
Browdley better. Romans, Church of England, Methodists, Atheists, Agnostics
—they're all one to me if they'll do that."

"So religion has no place in your better Browdley?"

George appreciated a nicely laid trap, especially when he was in no danger
of falling into it. He smiled as he had so often smiled across the Council
Chamber or a meeting-hall. "Nay—I'd rather ask you if MY better
Browdley has a place in YOUR religion? Because if it hasn't you'll not do so
well at St. Patrick's. I've got a lot of supporters there."

"Is that a threat, Mr. Boswell?"

"No—just a tip. I've no hell-fire in my armoury. All I can tell
folks is that diphtheria comes from bad drains, but of course if they're more
interested in pearly gates that's their look-out."

Wendover's smile broadened. "If I were old-fashioned I'd probably say that
God would punish you for blasphemy. But my conception of God isn't like that.
I doubt that He'll find it necessary to strike down you or one of your family
just to prove a point."

George grunted. He had an idea that Wendover was enjoying the encounter as
much as he was, and already he recognized an agile mind. Agile minds were
useful, and it might be that Wendover would take the progressive side in many
of the town's controversial issues. George also realized that priests and
parsons had to stand on some ground of their own, not merely on what they
could share with every liberal-minded thinker, politician, or social worker.
All this weighed against his impulse to continue the argument combatively, so
he replied: "I assure you I didn't intend to be blasphemous, and I hope
you're right about God. I don't think I know enough to agree or disagree with
you. So I'm sticking to what I do know something about, and that's Man. Seems
to me Man could give himself a pretty good time on earth if only he went
about it the right way, but he just won't. You'd almost think he didn't WANT
a good time, the way he carries on." But that looked like the beginning of
another argument, so he shook hands with a final smile and left the priest
wondering.

A few days later Wendover wondered afresh when news spread over the town
that Councillor Boswell's baby had been stricken. But being honest he did not
exploit the situation. Nor did he actually believe that the hand of God was
in it. He just thought it an extraordinary coincidence, which it was, and
wrote George a note that merely expressed sympathy and hoped the child would
be well again soon. For he liked George.

* * * * *

During those dark days Livia and George hardly spoke,
except when she
asked him to do this or that; and he obeyed her then, blindly as a child
himself.

They hardly spoke because there was simply nothing to say after the one
sharp, inevitable, and rather dreadful argument.

When George came home late after a meeting and found Livia sitting up with
Martin, who was ill and had a temperature, he was concerned, but not unduly
so; and when he guessed that the thought of diphtheria was in her mind, he
told her confidently not to worry, since the boy had been immunized. She just
looked at him then and shook her head.

Over the small tossing body and whilst waiting for the doctor, they
thrashed the matter out.

The fact was that when the free immunization scheme had gone into
operation and he had told her to take Martin to the municipal clinic, she
simply had not done so. And she had lied to him about it afterwards.

He kept pacing up and down the bedroom, trying to grasp the situation. "So
you DIDN'T do it? Oh, Livia, WHY didn't you? How COULD you not do what I
asked about a thing like that? Did you forget and then tell me a lie to cover
it?... Oh, Livia... Livia..."

She answered: "I didn't forget, George. I went to the clinic once and saw
the crowd lined up outside. I didn't want to take Martin to a place like
that."

His anger mounted. "Why not? For God's sake what was wrong about it?"

"I didn't like it. I didn't like the people there—I mean the other
people with their children."

"SNOB!" He shouted the word. "Weren't they well-dressed enough for
you?"

"Most of them were as well-dressed as I could afford to be."

Yes, he knew that; he had let his anger tempt him into an absurdity as
well as a side issue. "Then why—WHY?" he reiterated. "Why didn't you
have it done?"

"I told you—I didn't like the place. Some of the children looked
dirty, and they had bad colds—"

"And Martin might have caught one! Or a flea perhaps! So to save him from
that you let him catch diphtheria—"

She interrupted in a dead-level voice: "I don't want to quarrel, George.
But don't you remember I asked if it couldn't be done by a private doctor?
And do you remember what you said?"

Yes, he remembered. There had been a wrangle, though a less bitter one,
about that also. Couldn't she realize, he had asked her indignantly, that for
months he had been making speeches all over the town in favour of free public
immunization? What would it look like if, after all that, he took his own
child to a private doctor? Couldn't she see what a fool and a hypocrite it
would make him appear? So Martin MUST go to the clinic. "Livia, I wouldn't
insist if it meant that the child would be getting anything second- best. But
the free immunization's just as good—just the same, in fact— as
anything a private doctor could give. The only difference is in where you
take him to get it. Don't you see we have to set an example to the town in
these things? If we don't use the new facilities ourselves, if we behave as
if we thought them not good enough for our own children, how can we expect
anyone else to trust them?"

Thus the argument when Martin was six months old. George had thought it
ended in his own victory; now, six months later, he realized that the end was
neither victory nor defeat, but just post- dated disaster.

He cried out, desperately: "I know all that, Livia... And I don't want to
quarrel, either—it's no good now—it's too late. But why...
whatever you did... why didn't you do SOMETHING? Why DIDN'T you take him to a
private doctor if you absolutely refused to do what I wanted? Oh, anything
—ANYTHING rather than this... Or why didn't you let ME do it?... Why
didn't you TELL me, anyway? Why did you LIE to me?"

He saw her hurt, stung face, and knew she was suffering so profoundly that
his accusations made little difference. But she could sting back and make HIM
suffer more, as when she answered with deadly irrelevance: "I did tell you
one thing. I said we ought to leave Browdley."

"Oh no, that's not the point—"

"It is and always will be. If we hadn't stayed here, nothing like this
would have happened."

Even that wasn't certain, he knew, but he saw the certainty in her eyes,
and knew also that she would never believe otherwise, however much he went on
arguing.

The arrival of the doctor interrupted them. His visit lasted an hour, and
when it ended there was nothing more to argue about, only a dreadful
possibility to face.

The local hospital was already overcrowded, so Martin lay in the spare
room above the printing-office. Livia shared it with him, while George slept
on his study couch—so far, that is, as he could sleep at all. Becky,
banished from upstairs, curled mournfully under the desk. George had not
realized till then the depth of his affection for the child. He was like that
with all his affections—they grew, and then lurked, and then sprang to
give him pain. He was torn unutterably by remorse at having been so busy
those past few months, so busy with the affairs of the town, too busy to look
after the physical safety of his own household. He should have made sure that
the immunization had taken place, instead of just mentioning the matter to
Livia and taking it for granted that she had done it. It was HER fault
—and yet it was HIS fault too, for leaving everything of that sort to
her. It was the streak of unreasonableness in her cropping up again, and this
time tragically—he should have been prepared for it, in all vital
matters he should have watched for it. He wished... he wished... and one of
the things he did wish now, but dared not wish aloud, was that he HAD left
Browdley. He almost dared not wish it in thought, lest there should pass some
spark between his eyes and hers, some spark to set off a conflagration, or
—even worse—to indicate a mood which she would take to be
surrender. So it had come to THAT—that he thought of her as an enemy,
or of his love for her as an enemy? Which—or both? He puzzled over it,
far too modest to think his own emotions unique, but wondering if there were
outsiders who would understand them better than he did— novelists, say,
or psycho-analysts. Or that fellow Wendover, if ever he got to know him well
enough? Though how could a priest... and yet, after all, it WAS a spiritual
matter in some ways. Thus he argued with himself, and as the days passed and
Martin did not improve, it occurred to him that the greatest single
difference between Livia and himself was that she was too utterly fearless to
be reasonable, while he was too reasonable to be utterly fearless. And at a
certain level of experience there was simply no compromise between them.

Just before dawn one morning he dozed off in the chair and dreamed of his
own boyhood, a dream he had had recurrently before, though never with such
clarity. It was about his Uncle Joe, whom he had gone to live with when he
was seven years old, and of whom he had had more fear (on one occasion only)
than ever before or since of anything or anyone. What had happened actually,
though not always in the dream, was that uncle and nephew had met for the
first time at the house in Mill Street, when no one else was there. This was
a few months after his father had died, a week after the funeral of his
mother, and a few hours after the door had closed on his elder brother Harry,
his elder sister Jane, and the furniture-removers.

George had been the youngest of a family of six, with a gap so wide
between himself and the rest that at the time he was left parentless all the
others were grown-up and some of them married. Their bickerings about who
should take care of him (each one having a completely plausible alibi) had
made them jump at an unexpected offer from their mother's brother, despite
the fact that he and their father had quarrelled years before over some point
of behaviour which (according to the latter) "just shows what a wicked man
Joe is". Nobody ever told George more than that; all Harry would add was an
especially sinister: "You'll find out soon enough, Georgie." And when the
Mill Street household was broken up, Jane and Harry watched the last of the
furniture stowed away in the van, then looked at George as if it were somehow
disobliging of him to be alive. Finally Jane whispered: "We might as well go
now, Harry—George'll be all right by himself till Uncle Joe comes
—he said he'd be along as soon as he closed the shop."

Which made an excellent excuse to go about their respective affairs and
leave a boy of seven alone in an empty house in which both his parents had
recently died, there to await (with no lights and dusk approaching) the
arrival of a man he had never seen before, and who, from mysterious hints and
rumours he had heard, must surely be some kind of monster.

And about nine o'clock this legendary Uncle Joe, having paused longer than
he intended at the Liberal Club, came striding along Mill Street to knock at
Number Twenty-Four. George could not, at that moment of panic, decide whether
he were more frightened of the darkness or of his uncle; he could only crouch
under the stairs until the knock was repeated. Then he decided that the
unknown peril was worse and that he would not open the door at all. But in
the meantime Uncle Joe had gone round to the back of the house and found a
door there unlocked, so that he simply walked in, stumbling and making a
great commotion in the dark while he struck matches and called for
George.

George saw his face first of all in the light of the quick-spurting flame
—not, perhaps, the most reassuring way for anyone bordering on hysteria
to encounter a feared stranger. He saw a big reddish face, with bristling
moustaches, tufts of hair sticking out of the nose and ears, and eyebrows
which, owing to the shadow, seemed to reach across the entire forehead.

The result of all this was that by the time Uncle Joe, groping after a
series of wild screams that jumped alarmingly from room to room, finally
traced them to the corner of an upstairs cupboard, George had fainted and the
old man had used up all his matches.

The only thing he could think of was to carry the boy downstairs in his
arms and thence out of the house into the street. They had reached the corner
before George came-to, whereupon Uncle Joe, panting for breath, gladly set
him down on the edge of the kerb with a lamp-post to lean against. Then,
being a man of much kindness but little imagination, he could think of
nothing further but to relight his pipe while the boy 'got over it', whatever
'it' was.

Presently George looked up from the kerb, saw the big man bending over
him, and despite the now less terrifying eyebrows, would have raced away in
renewed flight had there been any power left in his legs. But there seemed
not to be, so he sat there helpless, resigned to the worst as he heard his
captor fumbling around and muttering huskily: "Bugger it! No more matches
—wasted 'em all looking for you, young shaver!"

Suddenly then, by a sort of miracle, the heartening message came through
—that everything was ALL RIGHT; but only years afterwards was George
able to reflect that in that same first kindly breath there had been the two
things that had made his father call Uncle Joe a wicked man—namely, a
'swear' and the smell of whisky.

All this was what REALLY happened... but in the dream it did not always
end like that; sometimes the fear of the stranger's footsteps in the empty
house lasted till the crisis of waking.

And now, years later, while his son lay desperately ill in the room above,
George dreamed of this fear again, and was wakened by the doctor's hand.
"Sorry, George... but I think you'd best go up."

"Is it—is it—bad?"

"Pretty bad... this time."

George went upstairs, still with the agony of the dream pulsating in his
veins; and then, from the bedroom doorway, he saw Livia's face. There was no
fear in it as she glanced not to him, but to the doctor.

The doctor walked over to the bed, stooped for a moment, then looked up
and slowly nodded.

* * * * *

One thing was now settled more definitely than ever: George
would not
leave Browdley, and if she should ever ask him again he would answer from a
core of bitterness in his heart. But she did not even mention the matter. She
seemed not to care where they lived any more, and if an absence of argument
were the only test, then they were at peace during the days that followed.
But George knew differently, and he knew that Livia knew also. It was no
peace, but an armistice on terms, and one only tolerable so long as both
parties fenced off large parts of their lives as individual territory.

They both grieved over Martin, and comforted each other up to the boundary
line, but that was fixed, and beyond it lay inflexibility. When, for
instance, she said a week or so later: "Tom Whaley telephoned while you were
out to say that the Council reconvenes on the seventeenth," George simply
nodded, and went to his study.

She followed him, adding: "He wanted to know if you'd be there." She
waited for him to reply, then said: "I don't mind you going, George. I
don't mind being left alone in the evenings."

He answered: "Aye, I shall go."

"Perhaps you'd better let him know then—"

"Don't worry—I met him in the street after he telephoned you. I told
him I'd be going."

And there was finality in that.

He went to the meeting, and found there an atmosphere not only of warm
personal sympathy, but of eagerness to accept him as a prophet; so that he
scored, almost without opposition, the biggest personal triumph of his
career. The housing scheme he had urged for years went through the first
stage of its acceptance that very night; even his bitterest antagonists gave
way, while to his friends he became manifestly the leader of a cause no
longer lost. There was irony (unknown to any but himself) that, at such a
moment of easy victory, he had never felt grimmer in spirit. When he reached
home late that night Livia was in bed, and he would not disturb her, for the
news he had did not seem enough excuse; she could read about it if she wished
(and there was irony there too) in the pages of the next Guardian. But the
excitements of the evening had made him sleepless, so he sat up in his study
till daylight, reading and writing and thinking and working out in his mind
the terms of the unspoken armistice.

One afternoon he found her with Fred, the messenger boy from the printing
works, busily engaged in clearing up the yard behind the office that had
always (as far back as anyone could remember) been a dumping-ground for old
papers, cardboard boxes, tin cans, etc. It was such a small area, enclosed on
two sides by buildings and on the remaining ones by high brick walls, that
nobody had ever thought of any other use for it. But now, when she saw his
curiosity, she asked if he would mind her turning it into a garden.

"Why, of course not," he answered, pleased that she should show such an
interest. "But I doubt if anything'll grow there."

"We'll see," she said.

"I'll give you a hand with it if you like."

"No, there's no need. Fred will dig it over, and then I can do all the
rest myself."

"What'll you plant?"

"I don't know."

"I'll get you some books about gardening if you like."

"Oh no, no... I don't want BOOKS."

And there was just the hint of a barb in that. It was as if she had chosen
books as a symbol of HIS world, just as flowers were to be of HERS. The
books, too, were increasing all the time; some of them came as review copies
addressed to the Guardian by publishers who did not realize how small and
unimportant the paper was; many he bought, a few were sent him as chairman of
this or that municipal committee. He had no collecting spirit, no special
desire to make a show of what he had read. Yet as the books filled up the
room, and new shelves had to be rigged till they covered most of the wall
space, he could not help a little pride in them to match Livia's pride (and
his own too) in the transformed dumping- ground below. And his pride grew
definite from the moment that Councillor Whaley, visiting him once while
Livia was out, exclaimed: "George, I reckon this must be just about the best
library in Browdley—in anyone's house, I mean. What does your wife
think about it?"

"LIVIA?... Why... why do you ask that?"

"Only because she once worked in a library herself—I thought maybe
books were in her line too."

"No," George answered. "She likes gardening better." And he took Tom to
the window and pointed down to the rectangle of cleared ground. "She says
she'll plant roses."

"Why, that'll be fine." And then as an afterthought: "Nobody'll see it,
though—except you. Maybe that's the idea—to give you something to
look at."

George smiled. "I don't know, Tom. But MY idea is that it gives her an
interest in life. She needs it—since losing the boy."

"Naturally. But I'll tell you what, George, if you don't mind plain
speaking from an old bachelor." He whispered something in George's ear about
Livia's youth and having more children. "Aye," George replied heavily, and
changed the subject.

* * * * *

Martin's death seemed to bring him into immediate
friendship with Father
Wendover. Neither ever referred to the curious 'coincidence' that both must
often have recollected; nor did the priest talk much from the standpoint of
his profession. He showed, however, considerable interest in George's family
background, and once he said: "You'd have made a fine upstanding atheist,
George, if only your father had lived a bit longer."

"Maybe," George answered, "but Uncle Joe didn't continue the training, and
the result is I'm no more an atheist today than you are... Not that he was
AGAINST religion, mind you. He even sent me to Sunday school."

"Why?"

"To be frank, I think it was because he thought Sunday schools were a good
way of giving kids something to do when they were too dressed-up to do
anything else."

"An appalling idea."

"Oh, I don't know. He was all right." George mused for a moment. "It's odd
we should be discussing him, because I dreamed about him the night Martin
died... Aye, he was all right. And he liked his Sundays too—in his own
way. To my father they were days of gloom and mystery and foreboding, and
that was the way he wanted 'em, but to my uncle they were nice comfortable
days when you had a late breakfast and took a walk along the canal-bank while
dinner was cooking and then had a snooze in the afternoon and high tea at
five o'clock—and that was the way HE wanted 'em."

"Did he ever go to church?"

"Aye, when he felt like it. It's true he felt like it less and less as he
grew older, but he still counted church as part of a proper Sunday programme.
He used to say he'd attend regularly if only Aunt Flo were a bit better on
her feet, and he'd have liked to put more in the collection plate if only he
hadn't lost so much in cotton investments, and he'd have been proud as Punch
if I'd had a voice to sing in the choir—but I hadn't... Altogether what
he'd have liked to do was so well-meaning you could hardly call him
irreligious, while what he actually did was so little that he interfered with
nobody—not even me."

Wendover, having watched George's face during all this with a growing
conviction that its look of guilelessness was sincere, now slowly smiled. "Is
that your portrait of a good man, George?"

"Well, he was good to me," George answered, simply.

* * * * *

Trade remained sluggish in the town, but the Guardian,
owing mainly to
Livia's reorganization, began to show a small profit. George was then able to
give her more money, but she seemed to care as little about it as about
anything else over which he had any control. Yet she did not mope, brood, or
look particularly unhappy. Nor did she nag, upbraid, or quarrel. It was
merely that she seemed in some peculiar way to have withdrawn into a world of
her own, where George was not invited nor could have followed her if he had
been.

One evening early in 1921 he came home after a long day out of the town on
municipal business, having left in the morning before she was awake. But now,
hearing him enter, she came scampering down the stairs, and at the instant of
recognition he gasped with the sensation of pain suddenly switched off inside
him. Then, as always when he saw her afresh after even a few hours' absence,
recognition dissolved into a curious feeling of never having seen her before,
but of experiencing some primitive thrill that the few years of their
marriage had neither enhanced nor made stale. Whatever that was to him, it
had been from their first moment of meeting and would be till their last; it
was something simple that only became complex when he sought to analyse it.
Just now he was glad to hold her in a brief hug of welcome and feel that
everything was miraculously all right, even if it wasn't, and that nothing
needed explaining, even if it did.

He said he was sorry he was late, and she answered brightly: "Oh, that's
all right—the dinner won't spoil. Lamb stew—can't you smell
it?"

He sniffed hard and joyfully; lamb stew was one of his favourite dishes,
and he would relish it all the more from thinking that perhaps she had
prepared it to please him.

"Ah," he gasped.

"And we'll have it in the kitchen to save time," she said, evidently
reaching an impromptu decision. "Annie—did you hear? We'll all eat in
the kitchen, so hurry up."

That was like her; the knack of taking short cuts to get what she wanted
—the quick plan, or change of plan, generally based on something so
elemental that only a child could have avoided the mistake of reading into it
more than was there. This eating in the kitchen, for instance, had nothing to
do with any feeling on Livia's part that Annie was an equal (only George
could, and did, sometimes think of such a thing); really, it was just that
Livia was hungry and, as with all her desires, could not bear to be kept
waiting. George was generally amused by this, and often quoted the occasion
when, having attended a Council meeting at which he presided, she had left
exclaiming: "Oh, George, I'll NEVER go to one of those affairs again! They
drive me silly—all that proposing and seconding and moving the
nominations closed and appointing a sub-committee to report to the next
meeting... No wonder nothing ever gets done!" But something DOES get done,
had been George's slightly hurt rejoinder—unspoken, however, because he
knew she would then argue that what he called SOMETHING was not much more
than what she called next to nothing...

But now, walking after her into the kitchen, his spirits rose, crowning
the physical ease that came over him as he entered the warm small room and
sat at the scrubbed table between the gas-stove and the meat-safe. A curious
half-painful happiness clutched at him as he watched her across the
table-top; she was, he had to admit, as sheerly fascinating to him as ever,
with those dark, almost violet-blue eyes that glowed rather than sparkled and
gave her whole face a rapt, almost mystic expression; the hair so straw- pale
that it could look white against mere gold, the mouth too big for the nose,
but the nose so small and perfect that he had sometimes thought that if he
were a sculptor he would model it and stick it on a model of someone else's
face—yet he had never found that more matching face, and doubtless
never would.

She was talking—most unusually for her—about events of the
day, conditions in Europe, and how interesting it must be to visit foreign
countries now that the basic comforts of peace-time travel had begun to
return.

"Aye," he agreed. "I'll bet it's interesting. I've got a book about
post-war Europe if you'd like to—"

"Oh, I don't mean BOOKS, George. It isn't here where you can understand
things always"—and she touched her head—"it's more like
THIS—" and he expected her to touch her heart, but instead she put up
her small fist and shook it in his face, laughing meanwhile. "Oh, George
—you and your books and meetings and speeches..."

He did not mind the mockery he was accustomed to, especially as she seemed
so happy over it. She went on chattering till the meal was ended; then, as
they left the kitchen for Annie to wash up, he said—and it was the
truth: "Livia, that's the best lamb stew I ever tasted. How about a cup of
tea with me in the study before I get down to some work?"

"You've got work to do tonight?"

"Aye—just a bit to finish up. The Education Committee meets tomorrow
and I've got to hammer at them again for that new school."

She accompanied him to the study and presently Annie brought in tea. He
was so happy, sitting there with her, in his own room with the books in it,
and with her own garden below the window outside. And suddenly, as if to
signalize the height of his content, the vagrant thought came to him that
this was the moment, if a man were a smoker, to light up a pipe, or a cigar,
or a cigarette. He laughed to himself at the notion, and then had to tell her
what he had been laughing at.

"Well, why don't you?" she asked. "I've got some cigarettes."

"Nay... I was only joking, Livia."

"But George, if you WANT to—"

"I don't want to—it was just that now would be the time if I ever
did want to."

And then he saw her face cloud over as if something in his words had sent
her into a new mood. She went to the window, stared out over the dark garden
for a moment, then turned round and said very quietly: "Now's the time for me
too. George, I want to leave you."

"WHAT?" The happiness—so passing, so brief—drained away from
mind and body, so that he felt older by years within seconds. "Livia... WHAT?
WHAT'S THAT?"

"I—I MUST leave you, George."

"But, Livia—WHY—what on earth—" He was on his feet and
crossing the room towards her.

"No, George—don't—don't... Or you can if you like— I
don't mind. It isn't that I've changed in how I feel toward you. And there's
nobody else... but I'm not happy, George, since Martin died."

"Livia—my little Livia—neither am I—you know that
—but after all—" And then he could only add:

"I thought you DID look happy tonight."

"That's because I'd made up my mind."

"To do what?"

"To leave you, George."

Then she went into further details. It seemed that years before (and he
had never known this) she had been to some school in Geneva and had made
friends with local people there; she had lately been in correspondence with
them and they had asked her to visit them and stay as long as she liked. So
she had accepted.

"But..." And even amidst his unhappiness the germ of optimism began to
sprout. "But, Livia—that's another matter altogether! You have friends
in Geneva, so you want to spend a holiday with them! Well—why not, for
heaven's sake?" And he began to laugh. "My little Livia'— what a
dramatic way of putting it—that you're going to LEAVE me! Of course you
are—for as long as you like—I daresay you DO need a
holiday—I'd come with you if I could spare the time—but as you
know, I can't. I don't mind you going at all—or rather, I don't mind so
much, because although I'll miss you I'll be happy knowing you're having such
a good time."

"I may not have a good time, George."

"Of course you will, and when you've had enough of it you'll come back to
smoky old Browdley like a new woman. I'll take care of things here while
you're away—I'll look after Becky—"

"Oh no, I'll take Becky with me."

"You will?... All right, if you want. Anything you want... You're run
down, Livia—a holiday's just what you need—I'm sure a doctor
would say so. And don't worry about money—I'll go to the bank tomorrow
and see if there's a bit extra I can find for you..."

"Thank you, George, but I have enough... And now I know you want to
work."

"I did want to, but I don't know as I'll do much after this. When—
when are you going to go?"

"Tomorrow. I have all the tickets and things and I'm pretty nearly
packed."

"Oh, Livia, LIVIA..." And for a moment the battle was on again between
despair and optimism, the latter winning by a hairline in the end. "All
right, Livia—all right."

"Good night, George. Please do your work. Please." And she ran out of the
room.

A little later, when he went up to bed, she was asleep. He smiled gently
and with relief as he saw her thus, for he had already schooled and drilled
his optimism, and that she could sleep so soon, as calmly as a child, was
reassurance to all his hopes; while into his bones, as he watched her quiet
breathing through slightly parted lips, there came an ache of pity for her
—as if in sleep she told the plain wordless truth, that it was not in
his power to make her happy enough. She was so small, so mysterious, and to
him a part of something so incurable that he wondered, watching her in the
light that came in from a street lamp, what would have happened had he been a
shade less eloquent at that Council meeting three years earlier—if, for
instance, the voting had been seventeen to fifteen AGAINST the motion instead
of FOR it? Why, then, so far as he could see, he would never have met Livia
at all. And he would have taken that second examination according to plan and
have obtained his university degree. And possibly also he would have won the
by-election that would have sent him to Parliament as member for Browdley.
And also he would not have known such happiness, or such unhappiness
either...

"My little Livia," he whispered, stooping to touch her forehead with his
lips. He knew she would not wake.

The next morning she left. He travelled also as far as Mulcaster,
shepherding her and her luggage and her dog during that first stage of the
journey, and fending off all sad thoughts by the resolute pretence that it
was just a holiday. He was disappointed when a friend and fellow-councillor
entered the same compartment at Browdley Station; it was hard to concentrate
upon a discussion of local political news, but then, later on, he thought it
was probably easier than to have made conversation with Livia. She sat
cosily, almost demurely, in a corner by the window, staring with quiet
interest upon the familiar scenes. The hour-long journey, with stops at every
station, built up in George a certain resignation, so that when the train
reached the terminus he was well able to take command of the situation when
Councillor Ridyard noticed the luggage. "Why, what's all this?" Ridyard
exclaimed, reading the labels. "GENEVA? Who's going to Geneva?"

"My wife," said George, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"She's visiting friends there."

"Well, well! You don't say! Just for the moment I thought they'd appointed
you to the League of Nations, and I was wondering how on earth we'd manage
without you on the Housing Committee..."

At which they all three laughed.

Just before George saw her off on the London train, Ridyard's joke put him
in mind of something to say at a time when it is always hardest to think of
anything to say to anybody. "Geneva must be pretty interesting these days,
Livia. There's probably a place for the public at the League of Nations
meetings—you might find some of them worth looking in at... but of
course they do everything in French, don't they?"

"Do they?" she answered. "But I know French, anyhow."

"You do?"

"Yes."

"I never knew you did. You never told me."

"I never told you lots of things."

"Aye, that's about it..."

And then the train began to move, and there was no more time for anything
but the last shouted goodbyes.

Two hours later he was back in Browdley, desperately unhappy, fighting
again to believe that it was just a holiday. But after a little while to get
used to it he established a fairly permanent victory over his misgivings; for
she wrote several letters, quite normal ones, reporting what sort of a time
she was having, where she went, and whom she met. And he, in return, reported
upon his own doings in Browdley—his continuing struggle to manoeuvre
the housing scheme towards its first stage of accomplishment. When she had
been away a couple of months she wrote that she had found a job with a
tourist agency, conducting travel parties about Switzerland and Austria, and
this, though it seemed to make her near return less likely, reinforced his
belief that she was benefiting by the change. After all, it was quite natural
not to stay too long as a guest in a friend's house, and if a temporary job
offered itself, was it not sensible to take it? What really cheered him was
the knowledge that those tourist-guide jobs WERE temporary—the season
began about May and did not last beyond October. So that when October should
come...

But before October came, Lord Winslow came, on that First of September,
1921, to lay the foundation stone of the first unit of the Mill Street
Housing Scheme.

Between 1921 and 1938 much happened in the world; America
had the biggest boom and then the biggest slump in history; England went on
the gold standard and then off again; Germany rose from defeat to power and
then from power to arrogance; flying became a commonplace and radio the fifth
estate; people changed from being bored with the last war to being scared of
the next —with one short interval of cynical, clinical absorption.

And those were the years during which, in Browdley, the Mill Street
Housing Scheme was progressing unit by unit.

One afternoon in the first week of October, 1938, the Mayor of Browdley
presided at official ceremonies to mark the scheme's completion. It had taken
a long time, with many intervals of delay and inaction, but at last it was
finished, and clusters of cheerful little red-brick semi-detached cottages
covered the entire area of what had once been slums. George Boswell himself
was also cheerful; in his early fifties he wore both his years and his
mayoralty well; except for grey hair he had not changed much, it was
remarked, since the day so long before when the foundation stone had been
laid upon the first unit.

"Remember that day, George?" someone buttonholed him afterwards. "You had
Lord Thingumbob here, and my wife slipped on the way home and busted her
ankle—that's how it sticks in my mind."

This ancient mishap seemed to amuse the husband more than it did the
Mayor, whose face momentarily clouded over as he answered: "Aye, I remember
that day."

"And so you should, after the fight you've had. Seventeen years, George,
and without a Council majority till lately, so that you couldn't vote 'em
down, you just had to wear 'em out... Well, it's all over now, and a big job
well done."

"Aye, but there's plenty more to do."

The cloud then lifted, and the Mayor was seen to be enjoying the triumph
he deserved. True, there was no noble lord on hand this time, but there was
to have been a personage of equal if not superior importance, none other than
a Cabinet Minister—and everyone knew that his absence was not George's
fault, but Hitler's. George did not like Hitler—for other reasons than
that; but now that the Pact of Munich had been signed he could not help
seeing a certain symbolism in what had happened—the removal of the
threat of war by a last-minute miracle so that the final ceremonies of the
Mill Street Housing Scheme could take place as planned. And a further touch:
the very same workmen who had erected the flags and platform had been taken
right off the job of building an air- raid shelter under the Town Hall.
George mentioned this in his speech, and again in a Guardian editorial that
concluded:

"We people of Browdley—quiet folks who ask for nothing more than to
do our work in peace and live out our lives in decency—we do not
profess to understand the complicated geographic, ethnographic, and
historical problem of the Sudetenland which has come so close to plunging a
whole continent into the infinite disaster of war. We cannot be sure even now
that the settlement just reached will be administered fairly to all parties,
or whether, in certain phases of the negotiations, the threat of the sword
did not prevail over the scales of justice. What we DO know, by and large, is
that at the eleventh hour a decision has been made that every honest citizen
of every country will endorse in principle—because it is AGAINST WAR.
Let every man of Browdley whose death-sentence has thus been commuted, let
every woman of Browdley who will not now face sorrow and bereavement, let
every child of Browdley who will grow up to inherit a happier world—
let them face anew THE TASKS OF PEACE AND RECONSTRUCTION."

After the ceremonies George walked home across the town and had tea alone
in his study—the same study, though enlarged by a bay-window built over
the garden, as well as by inclusion of a book-lined alcove that had formerly
been part of the lobby. For George's library was now more certainly than ever
the largest private one in Browdley, the years having just about doubled its
contents.

Everything else was much the same, including Annie, and the
printing-office, and Will Spivey. When George handed in his Munich editorial,
the old fellow, a little crustier but otherwise unchanged by the years, read
it through, grunted, and said at length: "Do you want this AS WELL AS the one
about the new sewage scheme?"

"No," answered George. "Instead of."

"What'll I do with the sewage one then?"

"Keep it till next week."

But by the next morning George's slight misgiving about Munich had
thriven, and he took the opportunity to cut out that final sentence. Instead
he wrote:

"... For the rest, we must wait and see whether Hitler's word is to be
trusted. If his desire for 'peace in our time' is as sincere as our own, we
should expect to see some corresponding reduction in German armaments, and
until we have evidence of this we can only continue, however reluctantly, the
process of bringing our own armaments up to a minimum safety-level. THAT THE
GOVERNMENT WILL DO THIS WE DO NOT DOUBT."

George's optimism had merely swerved in another direction.

* * * * *

Like most Englishmen, he was shocked rather than surprised
when war came.
1938 had been the year of hypnosis, the sleep-walk into tragedy, but the
first half of 1939 brought a brand of disillusionment that made the actual
outbreak of hostilities almost an anti-climax. After that there was so much
to be done, and so little time for self-scrutiny, that George was spared the
full chagrin of awakening; like all mayors of towns, he found his office had
become practically a branch of the national government, with his own tasks
and personal responsibilities greatly increased. He shouldered them with
gusto from before dawn till often past midnight, while England slowly
dissolved into a new era—slowly, it seemed, because it had been natural
to expect change and catastrophe overnight. When no bombs fell on London, and
when all continued to be quiet along the Western Front, a curious hangover of
illusion recurred; it was a 'phony' war, said some; perhaps it was not even a
war at all. One morning at his editorial desk, aware of this unreality and
not knowing how else to handle it, George indulged in a little spree of
optimism. After all, he reflected, the good citizens of Browdley deserved a
pick-me-up; they had done wonders in response to all his war-emergency
appeals, had enlisted splendidly for air-raid protection and civilian
defence, and were resolutely creating a strong Home Front while across the
Channel hundreds of their sons were already facing the enemy, but so far,
thank Heaven, not being killed by him. It was astonishing, compared with the
First World War, how few casualties there were along that Western Front. And
thinking things out, George composed the following:

"We have now been at war for almost six months, and though it would be
premature to offer ourselves any congratulations, nevertheless we may
justifiably wonder whether the Germans are able to do so either. True, their
tanks and mechanized armies have scored victories over the farm-carts and
cavalry of Poland, but at the cost of overrunning that country they have
brought against them a factor which, with memories of a quarter of a century
ago, must chill the blood of even the most ardent Nazi—namely, THE FULL
FIGHTING STRENGTH OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE. For today that strength is
assembled, not in a line of half-flooded trenches hastily improvised, but
along the mightiest system of steel and concrete fortifications ever
constructed by man—THE MAGINOT LINE. No wonder that the Nazi Juggernaut
has satisfied itself with triumphs elsewhere. No wonder that (as some people
are whispering, almost as if there were a mystery about it) —'nothing
is happening' on the Western Front. If nothing is happening, then surely that
is the measure of our victory, and of the enemy's defeat. For that is
precisely what the Maginot Line was built for—in order THAT NOTHING
SHOULD HAPPEN."

George thought this rather good, for it rationalized something that had
begun to puzzle even himself slightly—that so-called 'phony' war. But
of course the Maginot Line was the clue. A high military officer had shown
him some photographs of it—after which the whole business became no
puzzle at all.

* * * * *

Perhaps as a result of this, he wrote fewer editorials
after the war
ceased to be 'phony'. For one thing, he was overworked, and if he ever found
himself with an hour to spare he preferred to drop in at St. Patrick's to see
Father Wendover, who had long been his best friend. As George had somehow
suspected from the first, Wendover was not only agile-minded but considerably
sympathetic to George's work in the town. He had always held what were
considered 'advanced' ideas for a priest, with the result that he more often
had to defend himself for being one than for having them; and that, he
claimed, was as good for him as for his opponents.

Such controversies had flourished in peace-time, and George had often
joined in them; during the war, however, and especially after the Norwegian
fiasco and the French collapse, nothing seemed to matter but the bare facts
of life and death, disaster and survival, enemy and friend. And George found
Wendover congenial because, beneath the surface of the proud ecclesiastic,
there lay a deep humility which, in a curious way, matched his own. Thus it
was to Wendover that George took his thoughts during the difficult days of
1940, and there was one day, just after Dunkirk, when he brought over some
notes of a speech he was due to make to a local patriotic organization. He
wanted to know what Wendover thought about it.

And the latter, while he was listening, smiled slightly. Here was George
Boswell, Mayor of Browdley—this decent, hard-working, well- meaning,
quite talented fellow—a good citizen and a stout-hearted friend
—a man whose powers of leadership were considerable and might have been
greater had he not been so personally likeable, and had he not liked to be so
likeable—here was George Boswell, with the Germans poised along the
European coastline from Narvik to Bordeaux, thinking it really mattered what
he said to a few hundred people gathered together in Browdley Co-operative
Hall. But then, as an honest man, Wendover had to admit that a similar
comment might have been made on his own sermons at such a time... for were
George's speeches of any less PRACTICAL importance? So he listened patiently
and said, at the end: "Not bad, George—not bad at all. Cheerful,
anyhow."

"You mean it's TOO cheerful?"

"Well, you always were an optimist, weren't you?" Then he smiled, but it
was a rather grim, troubled smile. "You know, George, I don't want to
discourage you, but things do look pretty bad. We've lost our army and all
its equipment, and we've about one plane for every ten the Germans have, and
the Channel's only a ditch nowadays..."

George's eyes widened with a sort of bewilderment. "Aye, I've thought of
all that myself. I've even wondered—sometimes—if they've got a
chance."

"You mean to invade us?"

"Aye."

"They might have. Recognizing the fact shouldn't alter our resolve to
fight to the last man. On the contrary, it's the basis of it."

George swallowed hard, then said, after a pause of gloomy thoughtfulness:
"So it boils down to this—we might even LOSE the bloody war?"

"I think we'd be fools to assume that it's impossible. But of course I
don't say we shall. I'm only speaking the thoughts that came into my mind
while I was listening to you—perhaps because you HAVE been wrong before
when you've made such gallant prophecies."

George suddenly stuffed the notes of his speech into his pocket. "Then by
God I'll be wrong again!" he almost shouted. "After all, as you say, I've got
no reputation to lose. Aye, and I'll not do it by halves either! I'll tell
folks that Hitler's on the verge of his first great defeat, and that whatever
else the Germans succeed in, they'll never lick England!"

So George did this, and it was among his most quotable prophetic
utterances. It was certainly the only one he had ever conquered a qualm
about, and one of the very few that proved completely correct.

* * * * *

But as the summer months passed and the air assaults that
had been
expected a year before began now upon London and the large provincial cities,
it became clear that this was not like the First World War, when every
rostrum and pulpit had resounded to the call of a somewhat romantic
patriotism. George could remember the Mayor of that day orating in Browdley
market-square about the injustices of poor little Belgium, and thereafter
luring recruits from the audience as a revivalist preacher extracts
penitents. Thank goodness we don't have THAT to do, thought George more than
once as he began his work on those fateful autumn days; and besides, it
wasn't poor little Belgium any more, but poor little England—yet was
there any Englishman who wouldn't somehow resent that phrase? Why, even poor
little Browdley didn't seem to suit. Indeed, as George went about his
war-time business in the town, visiting factories and homes and
organizations, it seemed to him it had never been less 'poor', in any sense
of the word. And it wasn't so little either. One day, in company with other
local mayors, he was taken up in an R.A.F. plane (his first flight), and when
he stared down from three thousand feet upon the roofs of the town, he
couldn't help exclaiming: "Why, it looks like a city!" To which an Air Force
officer replied: "Let's hope it doesn't, or it'll be put on the blitz list."
For Browdley had so far escaped, though bombs had fallen in the neighbourhood
at several places.

And there were other curious things about the war—for instance, that
even with all the new food-rationing restrictions, many Browdley families
were being better fed than in peace-time, because they now had full
employment and money to spend. And the children in the schools, so the
Medical Officer reported, were actually healthier than ever before in the
history of the town.

It was nervous tension that weighed most heavily during that first
terrible year of the real war—the loss of sleep through air-raid
warnings even if the raiders did not come or merely passed over; the extra
hours of work without holidays, the ten-hour shifts plus overtime of men and
women desperately striving to repair the losses at Dunkirk; the irritations
of tired folk waiting in long lines for buses to and from their factories;
the continual wear and tear on older persons and those of weaker fibre. But
on others the tensions, hardships, occasional dangers, and ever-present
awareness of possible danger, seemed to have a toughening effect; many men
who had worked all day found they were no worse off attending Home Guard
drills in the evenings or patrolling the streets as air-raid wardens than
they would have been in the pubs and cinemas of their peace-time choice. And
in this George discovered (to his surprise, for he had never taken deliberate
exercise and had rarely given his physical condition a thought) that he
belonged to the tougher breed. He was fortunate. There was even pleasure to
him, after a hard day of mainly sedentary work, in transferring mind and body
to physical tasks of air-raid defence, in the long walks up and down familiar
pavements, in chats with passers-by, in hours afforded for private thinking,
in the chance of comradeship with men he would otherwise have missed getting
to know. Not that he ever romanticized about it; he was ready to admit that
any fun he derived from what, in a sane world, would be a waste of time, was
due to the fact that so far there had been no actual raids; if there were, he
did not expect to enjoy them any more than the next man. But for all that,
there WERE good moments, supreme moments, and if there were bad ones ahead,
he would take them too, as and when they came, sharing them with his
fellow-citizens as straightforwardly as he shared with them so many cups of
hot, strong, sugary tea.

A few things gave him emotions in which pleasure, if it could be called
that, came from an ironic appreciation of events. For instance, that the old
Channing Mill in Mill Street had at last found a use; its unwanted machinery
was junked for scrap metal, while its large ground-floor, levelled off,
served as a headquarters and mess-room for the air-raid wardens.

And also that Richard Felsby's land, which the old man had decided too
late to give the town for a municipal park, had been compulsorily
requisitioned for the drills and manoeuvrings of the Home Guard.

But no use could be found for Stoneclough. It remained a derelict in even
greater solitude now that there were no holidays to tempt Browdley folks on
hikes and picnics.

* * * * *

George was an exceedingly busy man. Not only was his
printing business
getting all the work it could handle, but his position as Mayor counted for
more and more as the national and local governments of the country became
closely integrated. For the first time in his life he had the feeling that he
really represented the town, not merely his own party on the Town Council;
and if this showed how limited his conception of mayoralty had been until
then, he was disposed to concede the point. Anyhow, it was a satisfactory
feeling, especially as his tasks were far too numerous to permit him to
luxuriate in it. He was not a luxuriator, anyhow. And when he came home after
a fourteen-hour spell of work, it was rarely with time left over to indulge a
mood.

He did not even read in his study most nights, but made himself a cup of
tea and went immediately to bed and to sleep.

The ordeal of the great cities continued. Night after night the wail of
sirens and thudding of gunfire wakened Browdley, and sometimes a wide glow on
one of the horizons gave a clue as to which of the greater near-by cities was
being attacked. One night there came an emergency call for help from
Mulcaster, and George accompanied several lorry-loads of Browdley men in a
top-speed drive to the stricken area. Till then all his fire-fighting and
similar work had been a rehearsal; but that night, from soon after midnight
till long past dawn, he knew what the real thing was, and of course, like all
real things, it was different. Crawling into smoking ruins while bombs were
still falling in the neighbourhood, giving first-aid to the injured before a
doctor could arrive, he directed his squad of co-workers under conditions
which, despite all the training they had had, were in a dreadful and profound
sense novel.

A youngish doctor asked him when the raid was over: "Been in this sort of
thing before?"

George shook his head.

"I'd have thought you had, from the way you handled those stretchers."

"Oh, I've done THAT before."

"The last war?"

"Aye."

"How would you compare it—this sort of thing—and that?"

George answered irritably: "I wouldn't. And nor would you if you
could."

The men returned to Browdley with scorched and blackened faces, minor
injuries, and a grim weariness of soul which, after sleep, changed to
bitterness, determination, cheerfulness, even ribaldry—so strange is
the alchemy of experience on men of differing make- up.

On George, after that first irritable outburst (which he later regretted
as being needlessly melodramatic and quite out of character), the principal
effect was a decision to do something which, at any previous time, would have
been an acknowledgment of defeat, but which now, the way he could look at it,
seemed more like victory over himself. He gave up the Guardian. He did not
even try to sell it; he abandoned it. For years it had never more than just
paid its way, and sometimes not even that; but the real issue, in George's
mind, was not financial at all. He suddenly realized that the paper had been
costing too much in human effort, including his own, that could better be
devoted elsewhere.

"It's one thing with another," he explained to Wendover. "Will Spivey's
getting old—it's all he can do to manage the job printing— I'll
have to keep THAT going, of course—it's my living. And then there've
been newsprint difficulties, and you can't get paper-boys any more, and I've
just lost another man to the Army... And besides all that, I haven't the time
myself nowadays. If we should get a big raid on Browdley one of these nights,
we'd all have our hands full. I know what I'm talking about, after what I saw
in Mulcaster. Because I'd be responsible for things here, in a sort of way.
There's a lot more work in being Mayor than there used to be."

"And I haven't heard any complaints about how you're doing it,
George."

"I'll do it better, though, when the paper's off my hands."

"You're sure you won't regret not being an editor any more?"

"EDITOR?" George grinned. "What did I edit? Births, marriages, funerals,
meetings, whist drives, church bazaars. The Advertiser'll do that just as
well—and one paper's enough in a town of this size. Most folks always
did prefer the Advertiser, anyway."

"But you used to write your own stuff in the Guardian sometimes."

"Aye, and there you come to another reason why I'm giving it up. D'you
remember when I came to talk to you about that speech I made just after
Dunkirk?"

"You mean the one in which you prophesied that Hitler would never lick us?
Yes, I remember. And I'm beginning to think you were right."

"For once. But as you said, I'd been pretty wrong before. I'm glad you
said that because it made me think about it, and I never realized how wrong I
actually had been till the other day I got out the back-files of the Guardian
and re-read some of my old editorials. By God, they were wrong. After
Locarno, for instance, I wrote about France and Germany finally burying the
hatchet, and after Munich I said that even though the settlement wasn't
perfect, at any rate it might keep the peace of Europe for a generation...
and only a few months ago I was blabbing that the Germans couldn't break
through in the West because of the Maginot Line... Mind you, I was always
perfectly sincere at the time, but that only makes it worse. Seems to me,
Harry, I'm just not cut out to deal with world affairs."

"You've been as right as a good many of the politicians."

"Aye, and that's no compliment. Maybe it was a good thing I never got to
Westminster—I'd have been just another fool with a bigger platform to
spout from... And another thing occurred to me—I was thinking about it
last night on warden's duty—and it's this—that the nearer I stay
to Browdley the more use I am and the fewer mistakes I make. Look round the
place—I have done SOME good things—not many, not enough—but
they're here, such as they are, and I don't have to try to forget 'em same as
I do the stuff I used to put in the paper... Look at the Mill Street Housing
Scheme, and the new Council School, and the Municipal Hospital, and the
electric power station the Government took over. Aye, and the sewage farm, if
you like—that's mine too—remember what a fight I had over it?
Those things are REAL, Harry—they exist— they're something
attempted, something done. They're what I've been right about, whereas
Czechoslovakia's something I've been wrong about. So give me Browdley."

"You've got Browdley, George."

"Aye, and it's got me. Till the war's over, anyhow."

"And afterwards, perhaps."

"Don't be too sure. There's young chaps coming along as'll make me a back
number some day, but they're in uniform now, most of 'em... 'Vote for Boswell
and Your Children's Future'—that was my old election slogan. I hope
nobody else remembers it. I'd rather be remembered for the lavatories I put
in the market square. Because they're good lavatories, as lavatories go.
Whereas the children's future that I talked so much about..."

Wendover smiled. "I get your point, George. But don't over- simplify it.
And don't throw all your books on world affairs in the fire."

"Oh no, I won't do that. In fact when I've got the time I'll study more of
'em. I want to find out why we've all been let in for what we have. And I
want to find out why folks ten times better educated than me have made the
same mistakes."

"Maybe because education hasn't much to do with it, George." Wendover
added: "And another thing—don't be too humble about yourself."

George thought a moment, then came out with one of those devastatingly
sincere things that endeared him to his opponents even oftener than to his
friends. "Oh, don't you worry—I'm not as humble as I sound. That's what
Livia once said..."

He did not often mention her now, and when he did the name slipped out
casually, by accident, giving him neither embarrassment nor a pang. So much
time can do.

But the remark gave Wendover the cue to ask: "By the way, heard anything
of her lately?"

"No, I suppose she's still out there."

And then, after a silence, the subject was changed.

* * * * *

Even in Browdley by now the affair was almost forgotten,
and George could
assess with some impartiality the extent to which it had damaged his career.
Probably it had lost him his chance at the general election of 1923, though
his subsequent failure at two other parliamentary elections might well have
happened in any case. Undoubtedly the divorce had alienated some of his early
supporters, especially when (owing to the legal technique of such things in
those days) it had been made to seem that he himself was the guilty party.
Many of his friends knew this to be untrue, but a few did not, and it was
always a matter liable to be brought up by an unscrupulous opponent, like the
old accusation that he had put his wife on the municipal pay-roll. But time
had had its main effect, not so much in dulling memories, but in changing the
moral viewpoints even of those who imagined theirs to be least changeable, so
that the whole idea of divorce, which had been a shocking topic in the
twenties, was now, in the forties, rather a stale one. George knew that a
great many young people in the town neither knew nor would have been much
interested in the details that had so scandalized their parents.

Those details included Livia's re-marriage, at the earliest legal date, to
the Honourable Jeffrey Winslow, who had given up a diplomatic career to take
some job in Malaya. Except that Lord Winslow died in 1925 and left a large
fortune, some of which must have gone to the younger son, George knew nothing
more. The Winslow name did not get into the general news, and George did not
read the kind of papers in which, if anywhere, it would still appear. But
when Singapore fell, early in 1942, he could not suppress a recurrent
preoccupation, hardly to be called anxiety; it made him ask the direct
question if ever he met anyone likely to know the answer and unlikely to know
of his own personal relationship. "I think they must have got away," he was
told once, on fairly high authority. It satisfied him to believe that the
fairly high authority had not said this merely because it was the easiest
thing to say.

* * * * *

Those years, 1941 and 1942, contained long intervals of
time during which
it might almost have been said that nothing was happening in Browdley while
so much was happening in the rest of the world. But that, of course, was an
illusion; everything was happening, but in a continuous melting flow of
social and economic change; the war, as it went on, had become more like an
atmosphere to be breathed with every breath than a series of events to be
separately experienced. Even air-raids and the threat of them dropped to a
minimum, while apathy, tiredness, and simple human wear-and-tear offered
problems far harder to tackle. But there were cheerful days among the dark
ones, days when the Mayor of Browdley (re- elected annually owing to a
war-time party truce) looked round his little world and saw that it was
—well, not good, but better than it might have been. And worse,
naturally, than it should have been. Sometimes his almost incurable optimism
remounted, reaching the same flashpoint at which it always exploded into
indignation against those old Victorian mill-masters with no thought in their
minds but profit, and the jerry-builders who had aided and abetted them in
nothing less than the creation of Browdley itself. Yet out of that shameless
grab for fortunes now mostly lost had come a place where men could have
stalwart dreams. George realized this when—a little doubtfully, for he
thought it might be regarded as almost frivolous in war-time—he
arranged for an exhibition of post- war rehousing plans in the Town Hall
—architects' sketches (optimism on paper) of what could be done with
Browdley if only the war were won and the tragedy of peace-time unemployment
were not repeated. And by God, he thought, it WOULDN'T be repeated— not
if he had anything to do with it; and at that he wandered off in mind into a
stimulating post-war crusade.

* * * * *

One day he was visiting a large hospital near Mulcaster on
official
business; as chairman of a regional welfare association it fell to him to
organize co-operation between the hospital authorities and various local
citizen-groups. He was good at this kind of organizing, and he was good
because he was human; with a proper disregard of red tape he combined a flair
for side-tracking well- meaning cranks and busybodies that was the admiration
of all who saw it in operation. Indeed, by this stage of the war, he had won
for himself a local importance that had become almost as regional as many of
the associations and committees on which he served. More and more frequently,
within a radius that took in Mulcaster and other large cities, his name would
be mentioned with a touch of legendary allusiveness; somebody or other
somewhere, puzzled momentarily about something, would say to someone else:
"I'll tell you what, let's see if we can get hold of old George Boswell..."
And if then the question came: "Who's he?"—the answer would be: "Just
the Mayor of Browdley, but pretty good at this sort of thing"—the
implication being that George's official position gave only a small hint of
the kind of service he could render. And if a further question were asked:
"Where's Browdley?"—the answer to that might well be the devastating
truth: "Oh, one of those awful little manufacturing towns—the kind that
were nearly bankrupt before the war and are now booming like blazes."

After a meeting of the hospital board George was taken over the premises,
and here too he was good; he knew how to say cheery words to soldiers without
either mawkishness or patronage. And if any of the men were from Browdley or
district he would make a point of drawing them into neighbourly gossip about
local affairs. It was noticeable then that his accent became somewhat more
'Browdley' than usual, as if HOW as well as WHAT he spoke made instinctive
communion with those whose roots were his own.

On this occasion his tour of the wards was to be followed by tea in the
head surgeon's room; and on the way there, waiting with his nurse escort for
a lift, he happened to glance at a list of names attached to a notice-board
near by. One of them was 'Winslow'. It gave him a slow and delayed shock that
did not affect the naturalness of his question; she answered that the list
was of patients occupying private rooms along an adjacent corridor— all
of them serious cases and most of them war casualties. He did not question
her further, but a few moments later, meeting the head surgeon and others of
the hospital staff, he found himself too preoccupied to join in general
conversation; the name was already echoing disconcertingly in his
mind—Winslow... WINSLOW... Not such a common name, yet not so uncommon
either. Surely it would be too much of a coincidence—and yet those
coincidences DID happen. At least it was worth enquiry.

So he asked, forgetting to care whether any of those present knew anything
of his own personal affairs: "I noticed a name on my way here... a patient in
one of the private rooms... Winslow..."

"Er—no... But I... I know OF him—that is, if he belongs to the
same family. Is he—er—related to LORD Winslow?"

The head surgeon thought he might be. Somebody else said he was. The head
surgeon then said: "You can see him if you want. He's not TOO bad."

"Oh no, no—I wasn't thinking of that."

But afterwards, while he was trying to talk about something else
altogether, George wondered if he HAD been thinking of that. For the idea,
once in his head, engaged those sympathies of his that were always eager for
a quixotic gesture. Years before, he had come near to hating the man who had
taken Livia from him—hating him BECAUSE as well as IN SPITE OF the
generosity with which he, George, had treated them both. But now there was no
hate or near- hate left, but only a wry curiosity, plus the warmth George
felt for any man broken by the war. Would it not be worth while to clinch
this attitude by a few words of well-wishing? Could it possibly do any harm?
Might it not, if it had any effect at all, do good?

When he was about to leave he said that perhaps he would visit that fellow
Winslow after all.

"Certainly... Briggs here will take you over." The head surgeon singled
out a young colleague who responded with respectful alacrity. "Don't stay too
long, though."

"Oh no, only a few minutes. Not even that if you think it
might—"

The surgeon smiled. "It won't. You're too modest, Boswell." But he added
quietly to Briggs: "Better go in first, though, and see how he is."

As George accompanied the younger man across lawns and courtyards to the
block in which Winslow's room was situated, they discussed the weather, the
big raid on Mulcaster (history by now), the widening circle of war all over
the world, and the difficulties of obtaining whisky and cigarettes that had
lately become so acute that George had begun to feel almost ashamed of his
own total exemption from such common hardships. But they provided a theme for
conversation, and only when Briggs left him in the corridor did his thoughts
recur to the nearer urgency, and then with a certain qualm. Was he doing a
wise or a foolish thing, or merely an unnecessary one? While he was still
wondering, Briggs emerged, his face youthfully flushed as he stammered: "I'm
afraid, sir, he—I mean, if you could perhaps come round again some
other time—"

"Why, of course... Not convenient, is that it?"

"That's it." But the assent to such a vague explanation was so eager that
George went on: "Is he asleep? Or isn't he feeling good?"

"It's a mood they get into sometimes. They feel so low they just don't
feel like having visitors at all."

George said he perfectly understood, and then, to cover an embarrassment
that was more the young doctor's than his own, added: "I'm glad it isn't
because he's worse."

"No... he's getting on as well as can be expected."

They walked away together, again discussing topics of general interest. At
the hospital gate George said: "You did give him my name, I suppose?"

"Oh yes. I also said you were the Mayor of Browdley, but—
but—"

"But it made no difference, eh? Well, why should it?"

George laughed, and then they both went on laughing as they shook
hands.

* * * * *

But by the time he reached Browdley he could not see much
of a joke in the
situation, nor did he feel his usual zest for tackling the pile of clerical
work on his desk. So he walked across the town to St. Patrick's clergy-house.
Wendover was in, and George, on impulse, told him all about his visit to the
hospital and his discovery of Winslow there. This led to a longer talk about
Livia than George had had for years with anyone, and also to a franker
expression of Wendover's personal attitudes than George had yet encountered,
despite his many years of close friendship with the priest.

"You see, George, I never felt it my duty to discuss your affairs—
especially as you never told me much about them."

"Aye, I never felt like it—which is no reflection on you, of course.
And I wouldn't say you've missed much. I'll bet you find it hard listening to
stuff about other people's private lives."

"Even if I did, it would still be part of my job. Another part is to offer
advice."

"And that's even harder, I should think."

"Well, you know, a priest has one advantage—so many things are
decided for him by authority. Take divorce, for instance. The view of my
Church is very simple—we think it's wrong, and therefore we're against
it."

"Aye, I know. And that makes me guilty of compounding a felony because I
made it as easy as I could for the two of them? Isn't that how you'd look at
it—and at me?"

Wendover gazed at George very steadily for a moment before saying: "Do you
really want my opinion of you?"

"Mightn't be a bad moment to get it out of you."

"All right. I have it ready. Nothing new, either—I've had it for
years. I think you're much more like a Christian than many people who come to
my church."

"Quite a compliment."

"Less than you think."

It certainly failed to please George as most compliments did; indeed, for
some reason it made him feel uncomfortable. He said, almost truculently,
after a pause: "I'd do the same again if I had to. You can't hold a woman if
she'd rather be with someone else. And anyway, twenty-odd years is a long
time to go on bearing a grudge. That's what puzzles me—why should HE
bear a grudge?... Well, maybe I can guess. I can remember a few things Livia
once told him."

"About what?"

"About ME."

"Do you mean AGAINST you?"

George nodded.

"Why should you think that possible?"

And then, for the first time, after an almost quarter-century interval,
George disclosed to another human being the events of that memorable day,
September the First, 1921—the day of the foundation-stone-laying at
which Lord Winslow had officiated, and after which the two had had their long
conversation in George's study.

When he had finished Wendover made no reply at first, though he did not
seem particularly surprised. And George, with his usual revulsion of feeling
in favour of someone he had lately been criticizing, hastened to continue:
"Mind you, don't get too bad an impression. If I've given you that,
then—"

"No, George—and I don't rely on impressions. You've only told me
that she lied, and that she may have been unfaithful while she was still
legally your wife—"

"Aye, it sounds bad enough. But the funny thing is, she had her good
points."

"It would be very funny indeed if she hadn't."

George caught the note in the other's voice. "I know—you probably
think I don't blame her enough. But after all, she was MY choice—and
when she was only nineteen, don't forget. Might have been my own fault for
not making HER happy too. Maybe she's been really happy with this other chap.
I've nothing against either of 'em. And if he's ill or crippled, if there
were anything I could do—though I don't suppose there is... Well, I
took the first step today and got snubbed for it, and that's about the whole
story. So with all this off my chest, I'll now go home and try to work."

Wendover accompanied him to the street door. "Snubs are unimportant,
George."

"Of course—and I've got a hide like an elephant for 'em. I'd call it
my secret weapon, only it's no secret."

"It never was. Most of the saints had it."

George grinned. "Oh, get along with you. Don't you go calling me
names!"

"All right—I won't. I can't teach you much, but perhaps there IS one
thing—a piece of advice that Christiana need sometimes. While you're
trying so hard to be fair to everybody, remember to include yourself. That's
all."

"I suppose the truth is, I get a bigger kick out of being fair to the
other fellow. So there's no credit in it."

"Was I offering you any?"

George's grin turned to a laugh. "Good night, Harry. Thanks for listening
to me. That's the help I really needed, because there's nothing I can do if
Winslow feels the way he does. Nothing at all... Good night."

"Good night, George."

* * * * *

George walked slowly across the dark town. From St.
Patrick's to Market
Street was about a mile; it took him past the Library and the Town Hall and
the main shopping length of Shawgate. The night was moonless and cloudy
—almost pitch-dark, therefore, in the black- out; but to George this
made for no more than a little groping, and in the groping there was a sudden
awareness of his whole life, shaped by and shaping those familiar streets and
walls. It was as if, at the moment that things half-forgotten were coming
back to trouble and confuse, the town rallied invisibly to his aid, assuring
him that what he had done so far had not been in vain, and that what he had
yet to do could be limitless within the same limits. That these were
circumscribed, even narrow by some standards, was evident; but there was gain
to match that loss—the gain of warm personal contacts, the 'How do,
Tom?' and 'Good night, Mr. Mayor' that he would not by now have exchanged for
empire. And tonight, as he received and answered the greetings that his known
footsteps drew from passers-by, he felt upon his heart the touch of
benediction. These were his people, from whom he had sprung, and whom he
would serve to the end, because he believed in them and in the destiny of
their kind to make this world, if it can ever be, a happier place.

Comforted, he reached his house, entered the study, and turned over the
papers on his desk, driving himself to concentration. He still felt disturbed
by the day's curious incident, but somehow not as hurt as he had been or
might have been. Presently he carried papers over to his armchair and settled
himself in comfort. They were the minutes of the last Council meeting and
required his approval. The dry official phraseology merely emphasized the
part of his life that had gone on for so many years, and would continue to do
so—whether or not, whether or not. Like the rhythm of train- wheels
that go up hill and down dale, through cities and across country... WHETHER
OR NOT. But that again, the blessed rhythm and routine of work he knew so
well, led deeper into springs of comfort already found along the dark
pavements; and soon a measure of tranquillity was on him. He read every item
of the minutes carefully, corrected a few, initialed others, then soon after
midnight went to bed and slept dreamlessly till dawn, when the early-morning
buses wakened him as they started up in the garage just beyond the garden
—Livia's garden, as he still thought of it. Then he got up, went back
to his desk, and dug deeper into the pile of work there; and at eight, when
Annie brought in the morning postal delivery and some tea, he was still
working.

Among the envelopes was one that bore the Mulcaster postmark. Like so many
that reached him it was addressed merely to "The Mayor, Browdley", but the
handwriting looked like a child's. Inside he found a note scribbled in pencil
with the heading "Hospital", and so briefly worded that he hardly grasped
what it was all about till he had read it over twice. Just—"I don't
know what there is about mayors that got my goat this afternoon, but next
time, if you want to see me, drop in." And signed with the initial "W".

The note chilled George with its contrast of childish script and adult
irony. Presently he surmised that the look of childishness might have come
from writing with the left hand—doubtless an effort, yet not too great
for the extra words that hurt and were probably meant to.

Nevertheless, he caught the nine-five to Mulcaster.

* * * * *

At the hospital the nurse on duty told him he could see the
patient 'now'
if he wanted. He asked, because of her peculiar emphasis on the word: "What
made him change his mind?"

"Well, I think it was because of what Dr. Briggs and I both said." She
blushed as she explained further: "We said you were awfully nice and that
everybody liked you."

George's smile was a little ghastly, as if he had heard what might be his
own epitaph. He answered: "Thanks for the testimonial... All right, I'll see
him. That's what I've come for. Does he have many visitors?"

"None, so far. He's only been here a fortnight."

All this as they walked along the corridor. She opened the door and George
followed her. The room was cheerfully bleak, and contained bed, side table,
two small chairs, and a table in front of the window surmounted by a large
bowl of roses. The shape of a human being was recognizable on the bed, but
the face was so swathed in bandages that nothing could be seen of it, while
the legs, similarly swathed, were held in an up-slanting position by an
assembly of slings and frames. George was appalled, but the nurse began
cheerfully: "Well... here's Mr. Boswell AGAIN."

George waited for her to go out, but she stayed, fussing around with the
pillow and drawing a chair to the bedside, so he said the only possible
thing, which was "Good morning".

From the bed came a curious muffled voice returning the greeting.

"You'll have to stoop a little to him, then you'll hear better... His
words get all tied up with the bandages."

The voice grunted, and George placed his chair closer.

"There's only one rule," she added, finally moving to the door. "You
mustn't smoke."

"I don't smoke," George answered.

When the door had closed on her George heard what might have been a sigh
from the bed and then the question, abruptly: "Has she gone?"

"Aye," said George.

"She's a good nurse, though."

"I can believe it." And then after a pause: "I got your note this morning.
It's a bit quick to have taken you at your word, but I thought—"

"Oh, not at all. And don't be impressed by all these bandages and
contraptions. I'm not as much of a wreck as I look."

"I'm glad to hear you're getting on all right."

"Yes, they seem to be patching me up. Would you mind giving me a tablet
out of that bottle on the side table?"

George did so. He saw that the left hand was comparatively usable, though
the skin was pink and shrivelled.

"Thanks... they're only throat lozenges."

"I hope talking doesn't bother you. I won't stay long. I just wanted to
bring you my good wishes."

"Thanks... I can listen, anyway."

But George for once found himself without chatter. He said, stammering
somewhat: "There isn't much else I have to say—except that I'm sorry we
meet for the first time under these somewhat awkward circumstances. I used to
know your father—slightly. I met him—once—several years
before his death—"

"WHAT?" The exclamation was so sharp that it discounted the enforced
motionlessness of the body. And a rush of words continued: "What do you mean?
His DEATH! Have you heard anything? Who told you that? Have they been trying
to keep it from me?"

George realized there was a misunderstanding somewhere, though he could
not yet tell what. For a moment the wild thought seized him that this Winslow
might not be of the same Winslow family at all. He said: "I'm sorry if I'm
making a mistake. I was referring to LORD Winslow—the one who used to
be Secretary of Housing—"

A strange muffled sound came from the bed, uninterpretable except as one
of relief, though the words that followed were still tense with excitement:
"You certainly have got it all balled up, Mr. Mayor... That was my
GRANDfather."

* * * * *

George described the rest of the interview to Wendover the
same evening.
"Aye, it was my mistake all right, but even when I realized it I didn't
realize everything else immediately, because he kept on asking me about his
father—did I KNOW anything, had there been any news, and so on
—and of course I could only repeat what I'd heard from the man in
London—that they'd both got out of Singapore in time. But then he told
me they hadn't been in Singapore at all, but in Hong Kong, where his father
had a job.

"I didn't stay long after that. I could see I'd put him in a nervous mood,
and I felt it was my fault, in a way, for not verifying things beforehand.
And I was a bit excited myself, because it was hard to realize that he must
be Livia's boy—and not more than twenty-two, if that... Charles, he
told me his name was... I could have talked better to his father, if it had
been him, but with the boy I felt tongue-tied... because as he went on
talking it became clear to me that he hadn't the faintest idea who I was
—or rather who I had been in his mother's life."

"You didn't tell him?"

"No, Harry, I didn't."

"He must have thought it odd that you should take all that trouble to
visit him."

"Aye, and he said so, before I left. He got quite cordial—in a
nervous sort of way. He tried to apologize for having refused to see me the
day before—he blamed what he called the superstition that provincial
mayors are pompous old bores—'I wonder why people think so,' he said,
and although it was a back-handed compliment, I knew he was meaning it all
right. So I answered: 'Probably because many of 'em are'—and we had a
good laugh. Or rather, he couldn't laugh, but I knew it was the same as if he
was laughing... I promised to visit him again. He made a point of asking me
to, if ever I was in that part of the world."

"Don't you intend to tell him?"

"Not just yet. I don't see that it can matter much—to HIM. Or if it
did, it wouldn't help. You see, he NEEDS help. His nerves are all to pieces
and he's pretty low-spirited about things in general—I gathered that.
Maybe I can cheer him up... and if I can't—if he finds me a
nuisance—then it'll be easier for him to tell me so if he thinks I'm
only the Mayor of Browdley."

Wendover smiled. "You'd make a good Jesuit, George. You can find more
reasons for doing what you want to do..."

* * * * *

George visited the Mulcaster hospital every week or so from
then on. Not
all the visits were on account of Winslow; some would have had to be made on
official business in any case. But he found himself looking forward to them
all, and not grudging the length of the journey, which meant less sleep, for
it was in the nature of his own work that hardly any of it could be
postponed, shortened, or abandoned. And gradually, as the youth continued to
improve, there came to George the intense pleasure of noting definite
improvements each time—the slow removal of bandages; the first time the
cradles and slings were discarded; the first step from the bed to a
wheel-chair; and most of all, the lifting of the mind from despondency. All
this took months, and the visits, though regular, could not last long. The
Mayor of Browdley was curiously shy during the early ones—almost
desperately afraid of intruding where he might not be really as welcome as it
appeared—reluctant, it would seem, to believe that the invitations to
come again were genuine. It was unlike George, who was so used to being
liked, to have such diffidence; and yet there was in him all the uncertainty
of a man in whom the touch of bravado masks only a deep humility and an
awareness of personal inadequacy.

They talked of many things, from hospital gossip to world affairs, with no
plan or aim in the talking; and this, perhaps, was as good a way to get to
know each other as if either had deliberately tried. George was often tempted
to lead the subject to Livia, but always forbore; he had an odd feeling of
conscience about it—that his own concealment of identity could only be
justified so long as he did not take such advantages. Sometimes, however,
information slipped out without any probing. Charles liked to talk about the
family home in Berkshire, the big centuries-old house that belonged now to
his uncle, the inheritor of the title—"and thank Heaven it does
—my father never wanted it, and neither do I, though it's a lovely old
place to visit." He spoke affectionately of both parents, but seemed to have
spent comparatively little time with them since he was very young. "But
that's the way it is when your people are overseas. They pack you off to
school in England and you hardly see them for years at a stretch, and then
when you do they're almost strangers. It was better for a while after 1934,
when dad gave up his job and they went to live in Ireland, near Galway. It
was a sort of farm, and I used to stay there during the school holidays.
Mother made a good farmer—she had a knack for anything to do with crops
or animals. She could squeeze warbles on a cow, and that's a thing you can't
do without being sick unless you really love farming."

George didn't enquire what squeezing warbles was.

"And yet she could be the great lady too—doing the society stuff if
ever she felt like it. I've often thought she'd have made a damn fine
actress... And when she made up her mind about something, nothing on earth or
under heaven would stop her... My God, the wires she pulled to get out to
Hong Kong after the war started."

"I thought you said he'd given up the job."

"He had, but he didn't much like farming, and after a year of it he went
abroad again—for an oil company. Mother didn't like it, but she
followed him, and I didn't see either of them again till 'thirty-nine, when
they came home on six months' leave. They were still in London in the
September, and father offered his services to the Government but they told
him he couldn't do better than go back to his job with the oil company. So he
did—alone at first, because of the war and because mother was mad with
him for wanting to go back at all—but of course she soon followed as
before. She always followed him everywhere, though I guess they neither of
them expected to end up in a Jap prison-camp."

"End up?"

"Well, no, I didn't mean THAT. Oh God, I hope not."

"You don't really know what happened?"

"Not a thing—except that they WERE in Hong Kong when the Japs took
over. That's definite. All the rest is rumour."

George caught the sudden tremor in his voice, and made haste to change the
subject.

Once—and for the first time since the initial interview and
misunderstanding—they mentioned the former Lord Winslow. "I don't
really remember him," Charles said. "I think he disapproved of dad's
marriage, or something of the sort. But from all accounts he was a very
distinguished piece of Stilton in his way."

George was not quite sure what this meant; besides, he was thinking of the
phrase 'something of the sort' and wondering how much, or little, it
concealed. "A great authority on housing," he remarked safely.

"So are you, aren't you?"

George smiled. "I was one of six kids brought up in four rooms. Not a bad
way to become a PRACTICAL authority."

"I should think it was also a pretty good education for your father."

"Well, no—because he wasn't interested in earthly houses so much as
in heavenly mansions." George chuckled.

"A good thing his son didn't take after him, then. I hear you've done
rather well for that town of yours."

"Not so badly. I reckon Browdley's five per cent better than it might have
been if I'd never been born."

"That's modest of you."

"Nay, I'd call it swelled head. Takes a lot for one man by himself to make
five per cent of difference to anything."

"Same in flying. The idea of the lone hero soaring into the blue on a
mission of his own is a bit outmoded."

"Aye, it's all team-work nowadays." George added hastily: "Not that I'm
much of an expert on military affairs."

"Is anybody? What about all the so-called experts who've been wrong? About
the Maginot Line, for instance?"

George sighed. "I was wrong about that too, without being an expert."

"I suppose you were fooled by the last war—superiority of defence
over attack, and so on?"

"To some extent. I couldn't help remembering the Somme."

"You were there?"

"Er... yes."

"What were you in—the poor bloody infantry?"

"No."

"Artillery? Sappers?"

"No... I... er... I wasn't in the armed forces at all."

"War correspondent? You're still in the newspaper business, aren't
you?"

"I was—in a small way—until recently."

Charles laughed. "I WON'T be fobbed off with a mystery! What WERE you in
the last war, for God's sake?"

George then answered the question that he had not been asked for a long
time, and which he never went out of his way to encounter, but which, when it
was put directly, he always answered with equal directness. "I was a
conscientious objector," he said.

There was a little silence for a moment—not an awkward one, but a
necessary measuring-point in the progress of an intimacy. And this was the
moment that made George sure he was liked and not merely tolerated by the
youth whose less injured hand moved slowly across the arm of the wheelchair
towards him.

"Conchy in the last war, eh?" The hand reached out. "Shake, then. Because
that's what I might be in the next—if they have a next."

George took the wrinkled burned-red hand, though he thought it an ironic
occasion to have first done so. Presently Charles went on: "What happened?
You had a bad time?"

"Well," answered George, a little dazed at the extent to which they were
talking as if they had known each other all their lives, "I was on the Somme,
as I said, and THAT was a pretty bad time. My brother—one of my
brothers—and I—were in the same Ambulance Unit. He was
killed."

"Driving an ambulance?"

"No. We were both stretcher-bearers."

"Not exactly the safest job on earth."

"No."

"But you came through all right?"

"I was gassed—not very badly, but it led to pneumonia and a medical
discharge. Probably saved my life in the long run."

Charles said, with a touch of pathos: "What did it feel like—after
that? When you were out of hospital, I mean, but still not well enough to do
things normally? How did you get used to things again?"

"I didn't, because the things I'd been used to before the war were things
I didn't intend to get used to again—ever... But of course in your case
it's different."

"I don't know that it is, particularly... But tell me about how you got
started again. In business, wasn't it? A newspaper?"

"Aye, but it sounds too important when you put it that way. Just a
bankrupt small-town weekly. Nobody's bargain, they practically threw it at
me, but I thought it would help me in local politics."

"And it did?"

George nodded. "I was lucky. One of those handy by-elections cropped up,
and there I was—the youngest town councillor Browdley had ever
had."

"How old were you then?"

"Let me see... it was April 'seventeen when they let me out of hospital,
and the election was in the September following. I'd be thirty-one."

"You didn't lose any time." Charles thought for a moment, then added:
"Wasn't it against you to have been a conscientious objector?"

"Quite a bit. The other side used it for all they were worth, but
Browdley's got a mind of its own in local matters even in war- time." George
chuckled. "I was for lowering the fares on municipal buses before eight in
the morning. That got all the factory workers."

Charles smiled. "You weren't a pacifist in the election, then?"

"I was if anybody asked me, but I used most of my eloquence on the bus
fares."

"The war must have been on your mind, though."

"Aye, it was—just as it still is."

After another pause Charles said thoughtfully: "So you think it's wrong to
take human life under any circumstances?"

"I did then."

"You mean you don't think so any more?"

"That's about it. I'm not so sure of a lot of things as I was in those
days. I don't hate war any less, but the problem doesn't look so simple for
an individual to make up his mind about. Seems to me there are times when
life's less important than a few other things, and those are the times when
taking it—and giving it—are the only things we can do. It's the
price we have to pay if we can't get what we want any cheaper."

"And what IS it that we want?"

"I don't know what YOU want, but if I had a boy I'd want a better world
for him than either your generation or mine has had."

"A world fit for heroes to live in, eh?"

"Nay, I'd rather call it a world fit for ordinary folks to be heroic in...
And I can't see it coming unless we win this war. I don't see it necessarily
coming even if we DO win it... But there's a CHANCE if we do."

"Quite a change in your attitude from last time."

"Aye—but that doesn't mean I regret what I did then. Seems to me I
was right for a reason I couldn't have foreseen. Doesn't what's happening now
prove it? What good did that first war do—all the misery and butchery I
saw on the Somme? What was it for? To save freedom? There was less in the
world afterwards. To crush Germany? Germany was strong again within a
generation. To fix Europe once and for all? Europe got unfixed again worse
than ever..."

"I'll tell you one thing it did, Mr. Boswell—it gave some of you
chaps who survived it twenty years of a damned good time. It gave you twenty
years of movies and dog-racing and charabanc-outings and stock-market gambles
and holidays on the Continent and comfortable living—twenty years of
the kind of fun WE may not have, even if we DO survive."

George answered: "I didn't have twenty years of fun. I had twenty
years of trying to improve a little town called Browdley—trying to put
up a few schools and pull down a few slums—trying to make some headway
against the greed and selfishness of those old Victorian shysters who ran the
place for half a century like a slave-barracks..."

"And what does that prove? Merely that we all get saddled with old debts.
You had the Victorian mess to deal with—I've got yours."

"MINE?"

"Who else's? You surely don't claim that you used those twenty years
successfully? The last war mightn't have been so worthless unless you'd made
it so..." Charles added, smiling: "Not that I mean anything personal, of
course. You risked your life, same as I have, and then you came home and did
what seemed to you worth doing. But it WASN'T worth doing—because the
main thing wasn't right. And the main thing was the peace. Why weren't you a
conscientious objector to THAT?"

George answered gravely: "Aye, you've a right to ask. I'm quite ready to
take blame for plenty that I did—and plenty that I didn't do. I can see
now, like a lot of folks, that I was living in a fool's paradise— if by
any stretch of imagination you can call Browdley any sort of paradise. Maybe
if I'd had a better education—"

"Depends on what you call a better education."

"I daresay I'd call yours one. What was it—Eton and Oxford?"

"No. Charterhouse and Cambridge... and also Berlin."

"WHAT? You were educated in BERLIN?"

"Not IN Berlin—OVER Berlin." And then the boy laughed rather wildly.
"Sorry. I've been waiting to work that off on somebody, but you were the
first to give me a cue."

George smiled. "I see what you mean."

"You ought to. After all, you were at the University of the Somme
yourself."

"Aye, but don't let's be over-dramatic. War doesn't teach anybody much
—except to hate it. If you hate it beyond a certain point you go out of
your mind, so if you don't want to do that you have to forget it somehow or
other, and I suppose that's mostly what I and millions of others did." George
paused a moment before taking a further plunge in intimacy: "And that's what
you'll do too, my lad, unless you're the exception that proves the rule.
Maybe you are. But if you aren't... well, there's a maternity ward next door
for you to think of. Aren't you afraid that some day all those kids will
blame you as you're blaming me—not personally, but as a
generation?"

"A damned hard question, and the answer is yes, I AM afraid. I'm scared
stiff... and I'm not hopeful. But what the hell can I do? Lads of my age, as
you call them, have the war to win first, before we can bother with anything
else. Give us a chance to do one thing at a time, for Christ's sake."

"Give US a chance, then, too—even if it's only a chance to help you.
Some of us still have one foot out of the grave."

The door opened and the nurse entered. She had heard the raised voices and
the laughter-sound as she walked along the corridor, and now she was in time
to catch George's last sentence. It must have seemed to her a strange
conjunction, justifying the acerbity with which she approached the
wheel-chair, whipped out a thermometer, and said to George: "You mustn't make
him laugh, Mr. Boswell—it would be very bad for the new skin. And you
really have talked to him enough, I think... if you don't mind..."

It was true; it was the longest time George had yet stayed. "I
understand," he said, smiling to both of them.

Charles then asked the nurse if she would fetch him some more of the
lozenges.

She went out exclaiming: "My goodness, Lieutenant, have you used them up
already?"

"Seems like it, nurse." Then, when the door closed, he turned quietly to
George. "Just a moment—before you go. I wanted to say this, but we got
talking about so many other things... I've had the tip they mean to transfer
me somewhere else—for facial surgery and what not. Probably before you
come again... so if they do, and I send you my new address, would
you—would you have the time—to—to write to me—
occasionally?"

George laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Aye," he answered. "I will
that." The long argument had given him such mental stimulation that now
emotion came to him with an impact; after those four words he was speechless,
stricken at the sudden thought of an end to the visits.

The nurse came hurrying back with a fresh bottle of lozenges, then spied
one still half-full on the table beside the bed. "Well, I do declare—
you didn't finish the others after all! He's so absent- minded, Mr.
Boswell... Aren't you, Lieutenant?"

George stammered his goodbyes, and wondered as he left the hospital what
was the matter with him to have used up so much time in talking politics. Of
course it was the mere zest of a debate that had led him on, exhilarating him
as it always did—recalling the remark once made by a teetotal friend
that drink would have been wasted on George, since a good hard-hitting
argument produced on him the same effects, even to the hangover the next day,
when he wondered what he had said in the heat of the moment that might have
given offence, or that he didn't exactly mean.

But now his emotions were of a different kind. Sadness grew in him all the
way back to Browdley, coupled with and finally outweighed by a breathless
satisfaction that the boy had asked him to write. Of course he would
write.

* * * * *

Winslow was transferred during the following week to a
hospital in the
South of England, where specialists were reputed to work miracles with skin
and cartilage; but it was not of this that he wrote in his first letter to
George. He wrote:

"DEAR MR. BOSWELL—Just a line to let you know my new
address. I expect to be here several months, as the work they do here takes
time—and patience too, I expect, by all concerned. The men call it the
beauty shop. But the main thing I have to tell you is about my mother. I've
had news that she is among those to be repatriated from a Jap prison-camp.
The Foreign Office sent me word a few hours ago, and though they couldn't
give me any information as to how she is, or about my father at all, it
certainly is great news that she is actually out of enemy hands and on the
first stage of her way home. They don't expect her to arrive for at least six
or eight weeks, as the ship is slow and has to take a roundabout route. By
that time I hope to be well enough myself to meet her—though the
doctors here only smile when I say it. I'm a bit stubborn, though, when I set
my mind on anything, which is a quality I inherit from her. Incidentally, I'd
like you to meet her, because I'm sure she'll want to thank you personally
for your great kindness to me while I was at Mulcaster..."

When George took this over to Wendover the latter read it through and
turned on his friend a somewhat quizzical expression. "Well, George," he
commented at length, "it settles one thing."

"Aye, I've got to tell him."

Wendover nodded. "And quickly too. You don't want him writing to HER about
you."

"I don't see how he could."

"There might be some port of call where he could send air-mail."

"That's so. Anyhow, I agree with you. Spill the beans and get it over.
Might even have been better to tell him in the first place."

"One of the penalties of being too subtle, George. I could never quite
make out what your aim was—or still is, for that matter."

"My AIM?"

"Yes—in regard to the boy."

George answered: "I haven't got an aim—except that I'd like to help
him because I like him. I never realized how much I like him till now that I
can't see him. And I don't think it's because he's Livia's boy— it's
because I like HIM. He's a fine young chap—and a brain too... But I
suppose it'll be an impossible situation when Livia gets back."

"It might be. You'll have to take that chance. But take it now—by
telling him."

"Aye, I will. I'll write tonight."

George wrote a short letter containing the simple fact, and received in
reply by return the following:

"DEAR MR. BOSWELL—What a hell of a surprise! I'll admit you could
have knocked me down with a feather, as they say. I'm a bit puzzled why you
didn't tell me earlier, but perhaps it doesn't matter. Of course I'd known
that my mother was previously married, but I was never told any of the
details. Frankly, the whole thing makes no difference to me, but of course it
may to her when she gets here. I don't want to worry her, because from what I
hear and can guess, she must have had a pretty bad time..."

George wrote back, and they both kept up the correspondence without ever
referring to the personal matter again; nor did the youth even mention his
mother, or the progress of her homeward journey across the world. George
could not but feel that a barrier—temporarily, at any rate— had
come between them, and there returned to him his earlier shyness, diffidence,
and reluctance to believe that Charles really wanted to continue the
friendship. Then one day he read that the ship containing some hundreds of
women and children repatriated from Japanese prison-camps had put into an
English harbour. It was his turn to write, but he put it off, thinking that
even out of turn he could expect a letter from the boy about his mother
—telling of her arrival, condition, and attitude. When such a letter
did not come he eventually wrote briefly and rather meaninglessly about
nothing in particular, but to that letter he received no answer, and when,
after writing again, there was still no answer, he could reach only one
conclusion.

"I'm not surprised," he told Wendover. "He probably thought it as good a
way as any other to close an episode."

"That's a rather tragic interpretation, George."

"I don't think so. I wanted to help him, nothing more—and now
Livia's back, perhaps he doesn't need help. Or at any rate, perhaps I'm no
longer one who CAN help him."

"I hope it isn't going to worry you."

"No." George's answer was decisive. "Give me something to do and I'll
worry over it. But when I can do nothing..."

But George did worry, nevertheless, if that was an adequate word for the
quiet intrusion of thoughts about the boy into every momentarily unoccupied
fragment of his time and mind. Those fragments, however, were few on account
of increasing pressure of official work. There was, for instance, Browdley's
annual budget which, as chairman of the Finance Committee, he must prepare
for annual presentation. More urgent still was a general tightening-up of
air-raid precautions and civilian defence, for which London had issued
specific instructions, believing that northern England's long period of
relative freedom from enemy air attacks might be coming to an end. There were
also meetings and conferences on other matters with the Medical Officer about
a chickenpox outbreak, with local union officials and plant-management
committees, with regional groups in charge of War Loan drives, charitable
funds, and so on. Least arduous of all—indeed, a kind of optional
luxury in which George frankly indulged himself amidst all the urgent
necessities—was an interview with an idealist town-planner whose vision
of a new Browdley included wide boulevards, American-style apartment houses,
and glass-walled factories.

George almost forgot his personal affairs as he turned over the nicely
water-coloured drawings and marvelled at large green blobs representing trees
that could not possibly grow to such a size in less than twenty years. But
there was an even more fundamental anachronism. "Do you realize," he said, a
trifle impishly, "that your plan would mean pulling down practically the
whole town?"

"That was rather the idea," came the quiet reply.

George laughed. "I see. And it might be a good one except that if you once
did pull the place down I can't really imagine why anyone should want to
rebuild it at all. It's really only here because it's here, so to say. A
century ago they needed coal for the cotton mills, so they had to build the
cotton mills near the coal—but now they don't need the coal so much, in
normal times, or the cotton mills either. I doubt if they'd put up half of
these towns if they had the chance to begin all over again."

"I know what you mean, sir. Growth and then decay. It happens with towns
as with human beings."

"With countries, too, and empires."

"And down to the smallest villages. There's a place near here called
Stoneclough—"

George started at the sound of the mispronounced word. "CLUFF—they
call it. You've been there?"

"Yes, I just happened along—by accident. Very interesting. Seems to
be completely uninhabited, including the big house at the top of the
hill."

"Aye—there's nobody at Stoneclough any more."

"I took some photographs—thought of working it up into an article
—The Forsaken Village, or some such title. But I doubt if it would be
of enough general interest till after the war."

"And maybe not then," George answered moodily.

But he liked all such contacts with enthusiasts in their own special
fields. As a contrast, it fell to him the same week to visit the
parliamentary member for Browdley, none other than that same Wetherall (now
Sir Samuel) who had defeated him in the 1919 by- election, again in the
general election of 1923, and had represented the town in the House of
Commons ever since. An old man now; and like most former enemies, he had made
his peace with George. The political truce since the war began had brought
them even closer, so that George was genuinely sorry to hear that Wetherall
was ill. They spent an afternoon together in the manufacturer's house just
outside Browdley, talking over old times and old squabbles. Wetherall was
still rich, still worried about taxes, still unaware that anything had
happened to make the world vitally different since he was a boy. His solution
for the problems of the post-war cotton trade was that all Indians should
wear their shirts a few inches longer, and he couldn't understand how the
Japs could possibly have taken Singapore after the place had cost the British
taxpayer so much money to fortify. Capping it all, he persisted in believing
that George had changed during the years into someone much more like himself;
it gave him satisfaction to say (as if to justify his own liking for the
Mayor)—"Ah, you're not such a firebrand as you used to be. You've seen
a bit of reason these last few years."

George, reflecting what he HAD seen—the blitz raid on Mulcaster, for
instance—hardly thought he would call it reason. But why argue with an
old fellow who looked as if only his illusions could nourish him precariously
for a few more years at most?

Wetherall went on: "Just as well I've kept you out of Parliament till
you've grown sensible, George. You'll not do so bad when your time
comes."

"Why... what... what makes you say that?"

"George, you old twister, don't pretend it never entered your mind before!
Listen—and this is in confidence—I probably won't stand at the
next election. God knows when that'll be—after the war or after I kick
the bucket, whichever comes first. But I'm telling you this so you'll be
ready."

George was suddenly aware of the peculiar truth that it HADN'T been in his
mind, not for quite a time, and that it revisited him now as an almost
strange idea, with all kinds of new angles and aspects to be considered. He
said, sincerely enough: "I'm sorry you're thinking of giving up, Sam. Over
twenty years for the same constituency must be pretty near the record..."

"Yes, and it's meant a lot of hard work, one way and another, but I don't
grudge anything I've done for the town, any more than you do, George. After
all, it's Browdley that made me what I am."

George thought that was very possible.

"So when they sent me to Parliament I made up my mind I'd do the best I
could for them."

George thought that was very possible also, since during the entire period
of his membership of the House, Wetherall had made only two speeches. One was
about the local sewage scheme, which George had persuaded him to be for; the
other was against the revision of the Anglican Prayer Book, which nothing
could persuade him to be anything but against.

George said cheerfully: "Well, Sam—don't give up yet. And I wish
you'd try to fix things with the Ministry about our Children's Home. We ought
to get an extra grant for that, what with all the kids from the bombed areas
we've taken in..."

* * * * *

Sometimes the cheerfulness sagged a little and George saw
the future in a
hard bleak flash of momentary disillusionment; but even then he was prone to
diagnose his mood as due to overwork, and therefore not to be taken too
seriously. The cure was usually a good night's sleep or a chat with Wendover.
The priest's help was all the more tonic because of the fixity of their
disagreements, and also because (as George once laughingly confessed) he was
far too modest to suppose that he could exercise any influence in reverse;
but Wendover, with equal banter, wouldn't even concede that this was modesty.
"It's your instinct for self-preservation, George. We authoritarians keep you
going. How would you know your opinions were free unless you had ours to
attack?... But I'll suggest this—that before the century ends, it may
not be freedom that the world values, so much as order. Order out of chaos. A
new world, George, with an old discipline."

"Aye, but suppose that road leads to Moscow, not to Rome—what would
you chaps do then?"

"I should follow my Church, of course. But why assume that the two roads
are ultimately so far apart? One thing I DO know—that if the Church so
decided, it would be very easy for a Catholic to change his mind about
Communism, just as Moscow could doubtless make terms with Rome for as good a
reason as Constantine ever had... And what a tremendous bond that is in a
chaotic world—two major disciplined forces that know their own power to
enforce a decision!"

"You've forgotten the Standard Oil Company. That makes three."

"Let's say, then, forces that can command not only obedience, but willing
sacrifice."

"Which lets in Hitler. He could command all that at first. But in the end
he was defeated by free men."

"Only when they themselves learned to organize, obey, and sacrifice. And
as soon as they forget that lesson there'll be other Hitlers."

"Aye, and as soon as we forget we're free we'll have Hitlers in our own
ranks."

"There's danger in whatever we do, George... But don't misunderstand me...
I'm not pleading a cause."

"Well, I AM—and millions are fighting for it too! Today's my
future—like theirs—and what happens by the end of the century
doesn't give us much comfort—"

"Nor me either. It's merely that I'm content to let wiser men shape events
that can't yet be properly foreseen. Whereas you have to settle the whole
destiny of mankind here and now to satisfy an itching conscience. Quite a
handicap!"

"I'd do better if I didn't think for myself, is that what you mean? Maybe
I would—depends on who did the thinking for me. But I want to CHOOSE
who... see? And that's democracy—even for a little fellow."

"You're not a little fellow, George. You're a very shrewd dictator who
made up his mind years ago to have his own way in Browdley—and you HAVE
had it, against a big majority who've been either against your ideas or
indifferent to them—and the methods by which you've succeeded have been
slyness, smartness, blarney, importunity, intrigue, compromise, a certain
amount of downright trickery, and a vast amount of personal charm! But you
prefer to call it democracy!"

By the time they reached that kind of point in argument George was usually
in a good humour and his normal cheerfulness renewed.

* * * * *

He never realized the majestic and in some ways rather
terrifying alchemy
of English life so much as when he attended official conferences in London.
He had been attending them for years, until now they were something rather
like routine, but he always remembered his first one—when, as a young
man just elected to the Browdley Council, he had been sent as its delegate to
a consultation with high officials of one of the Whitehall ministries.
Because the Government in power was of the opposite political party to his
own he had expected to be frostily received and was full of carefully
rehearsed truculence that evaporated at the first calm, polite, and curiously
impersonal meeting with people whom he had thought of as his enemies. But it
had left him baffled afterwards. "Talk about raising the standard of
revolution!" he had reported, when he got back to Browdley. "It was hard
enough to make anyone raise a couple of eyebrows!" Was it possible that
London did not know what a potentially dangerous man he was? Or did not care?
Or both knew and cared, yet was imbued with some classic spirit that would
only return cool civility for warm antagonism? After he had attended half a
dozen more such conferences, George's bafflement lessened, not because he had
entirely solved the problem, but because he had come to terms with it; it was
as peculiar, yet could seem as normal, as the normally peculiar smell of the
London tubes.

By now, of course, he was not baffled at all. Whenever he visited the
Ministries on business he met important men who knew him, who called him
George, who took him to lunch and kidded him good- humouredly about his being
teetotal. The war years had only continued, with some intensification, the
natural process of all the years; and when, as sometimes happened, George
spent half a day at the House of Commons, he found himself surrounded by a
platoon of ex-firebrands who held official positions. "Too bad you aren't
here, George," he had often been told. "You'd have been at least an
under-secretary by now."

"But then I wouldn't have been Mayor of Browdley," answered George,
seeking to console himself from force of habit, yet no longer really needing
to. He liked London; but to be a stranger to it, even a familiar stranger,
kept him alive to that same majestic and rather terrifying alchemy of English
life, as slow and sure and relentless almost as the grinding of the mills of
God.

That it had helped to save England after Dunkirk and during the blitz
autumn of 1940, George thought very probable. For then its virtue had shown
like good bones under the flesh—especially its abiding combination of
firmness and benignity, so that the same machine of government could jail a
baronet for a rationing offence and organize the distribution to small
children of Mickey Mouse gas- masks. Nothing was too small, and no one too
great, to be beyond the range of that cool-headed but never cold-hearted
survey. And George, administering Browdley, had tried to generate something
of that dual mood in microcosm.

And yet... whenever he went to London he felt the strength of Browdley in
him, rebelling against certain things.

* * * * *

One morning, walking briskly along Whitehall after a
meeting with
officials, George ran into a man named Sprigge whom he had first met years
before on the Terrace of the House of Commons. George was pleased to be
remembered, and willingly accepted the other's invitation to have lunch at a
near-by club. They talked about the war and politics; Sprigge said that since
their previous meeting he had lived a good deal in China and the Malay
States, getting out just in time after Pearl Harbour. It was natural then for
George to ask, with an air of casualness, if he had ever come across the
Winslows.

"You mean Jeff Winslow, brother of Lord Winslow?"

"Aye, that's him."

"Knew him well, my dear chap. Often dined at his house. Good parties he
used to give—not so starchy as the really official ones, because, as he
used to say, he wasn't really official. You see, he was attached to the
Sultan of Somewhere-or-other, and that made a difference. The lady next to
you at dinner might be an Italian spy or an Egyptian princess or a Javanese
snake-charmer—used to be fun finding out... Was he a friend of yours
—Winslow?"

George answered: "Not—er—exactly, but I knew his father
slightly—and I've also met his son."

"And as a result of that you're sort of interested in the middleman,
eh?"

"That's it," George agreed. And then, to steer the conversation very
gently: "I remember his father expected so much of his career."

"Well, he was a brilliant fellow—no doubt about that." Sprigge
paused, then added: "Wasted, though, the way things turned out."

"Wasted?"

"Perhaps that's too strong a word. But he'd have done well in the regular
Diplomatic if he'd stayed in it... and also if... well, anyhow, perhaps it
wasn't his fault that he didn't. Not ALTOGETHER his fault."

George said nothing.

"Of course I'm only repeating things I've heard—but there was said
to have been some scandal about his wife—an earlier divorce or
something. And then other matters... later... well, one shouldn't
gossip."

"Did you meet the boy?"

Sprigge shook his head. "He was at school in England. I suppose he's of
age now to be in the fighting somewhere."

"Aye," said George thoughtfully. He would have liked Sprigge to go on
chattering, but just then a fellow club member said 'hello' in passing and
Sprigge insisted on making an introduction—Henry Millbay, the name was,
which to George seemed familiar though he could not exactly place it. Millbay
shook hands, declined a drink, and regarded George with a certain friendly
shrewdness while, to re- start the conversation, Sprigge went on: "We were
just talking about Jeff Winslow—the one who was in Malaya... Boswell
knows the family... Ever meet him out there, Millbay?"

Millbay shook his head, and the subject was dropped.

Half an hour later, after talk that would have been more agreeable had he
not been thinking of other things all the time, George remembered an
appointment and took his leave; but in the club lobby, as he was retrieving
hat and coat, Millbay overtook him. "I'm a busy man too," he commented, with
just the slightest derogatory implication that Sprigge was less so. "Wonder
if we're going in the same direction?"

They found they were not; nevertheless Millbay kept George chatting for
several minutes on the pavement outside. Presently he said: "I didn't want to
talk much in front of Sprigge, who's the biggest male gossip in London, but
he said you knew the Winslows—Jeff Winslow..."

"I didn't actually know HIM," George answered.

Millbay's glance quickened. "Oh, you mean you knew her?"

George experienced again, and for the first time in years, that old
sensation of a fist grasping his insides. "Aye, but a long while ago."

"Rather remarkable woman."

"Aye."

"She's just home from a Jap prison-camp in Hong Kong. I saw her the other
day." Something in George's face made Millbay add: "Part of my job, you know,
to interview repatriates. The idea is to get information about the enemy.
They all knew plenty, but it was mostly horrors... Of course HER story was
particularly interesting to me because I'd known her and her husband before
the war... Remarkable woman."

"Aye."

"Even if I hadn't known that already I'd have thought so after
interviewing some of the other women. They said she looked after English and
American children in the prison-camp. Seems to have been so bloody fearless
that even the Japs let her have her own way as often as not. Anyhow, she got
the kids extra food and medicines when nobody else could."

"What about her husband?"

"She didn't know. Nobody knows. After the first few months the Japs took
to separating the men from the women and shipped the men to another camp
—some said in Japan itself. Incidentally, she needn't have been
interned in the first place—there was a chance for some of the women to
get away, but she insisted on staying with Jeff. At the Foreign Office we're
still pressing enquiries about him, but so far without luck, and it's hard to
be optimistic."

George then asked, so softly that he had to repeat the question: "Do you
know anything about the boy?"

"He was in the R.A.F. and got smashed in one of the Berlin raids. I think
he's discharged now, and up at Cambridge. The mother's staying at the family
place in the country." Millbay paused as if to give George time to realize
where the conversation stood again, but George, though realizing it, said
nothing. Presently Millbay smiled and added: "I've told you a lot—now
you tell me something. What did you think of her?"

"Of... HER?"

"Yes. Of Livia Winslow."

The utterance of the name made George stammer: "I—I thought she was
what you called her—REMARKABLE."

"Rather vague, I admit... but perhaps elastic enough to describe something
a diplomat's wife should be. After all, Jeff had to handle fairly important
matters—important, I mean, to British policy."

"And you're asking me if she always agreed with that policy? How on earth
do I know? But I can tell you this much—I don't always agree
with it, and if that's become a crime lately, by all means put me down on
your black list."

George had reacted normally to a familiar stimulus, and Millbay reacted
normally to that type of reaction, with which he was equally familiar. He
smiled. "We're not as stupid as all that, Boswell, even at the Foreign
Office. And our black list is largely a grey list—or should I use the
phrase 'neutral tints'?" He paused a moment, then asked quietly: "Did you
know her when she was in Ireland?"

"No." George caught the alertness of Millbay's glance and countered it
with a more humorous alertness of his own. Suddenly he laughed. "Look here...
what are you driving at? Are you a detective or something?"

Millbay also laughed. "I might be the 'something'. To tell you the truth,
I'm just a Government official who once wrote a few novels." George then knew
where he had seen Millbay's name, and also why he had not clearly remembered
it; he was not much of a novel-reader. Millbay continued: "Perhaps that's why
I'm handed all these war-time psychological problems. They're quite
interesting, though, as a rule... Take this woman we've been talking about
—from all accounts she's top-notch for sheer physical and mental
courage against appalling odds. Yet all that—and every novelist knows
it—doesn't guarantee that she couldn't be a complete bitch in other
ways. Did you, incidentally, ever discuss Hitler with her?"

"Good God, no—the time I knew her was years before Hitler was even
heard of. You're not suspecting her of being a Nazi spy, are you?"

Millbay laughed again. "Stolen treaties tucked away in the corsage, eh?...
Hardly... So you don't think she'd have made a good spy?"

George answered: "From my judgment she'd make the worst spy in the
world."

"What makes you say that?"

George answered: "Of course it's long ago that I knew her, but people
don't change their whole nature. What I mean is—if they're... well,
outspoken... not always too tactful..."

Millbay touched George's arm with a half-affectionate gesture. "Thank you
for confirming my own private opinion. I never did believe there was anything
really wrong with her in THAT way—especially on the basis of the
incident that gave rise to most of the talk... You heard about it,
perhaps?"

"I don't think so. What was it?"

"Some big dinner-party in Batavia, with a crowd of officials, attachés,
army people, and so on. I was told about it by several who were there. Before
the war, of course—1932 or 1933. Conversation turned on Hitler, and
most of what was said was unflattering— especially from the viewpoint
of the career diplomat. Suddenly Livia said —'Isn't it odd that people
who profess to follow a religion founded by a carpenter are so ready to sneer
at someone for having once been a house-painter?' Quite a sensation! Of
course she was tabbed as pro-Hitler after that, but I really don't think she
had to be. I think she could have meant exactly what she said... Because it
IS odd, when you reckon it up. With all the perfectly sound reasons the
democracies have for hating that man, they choose to sneer at him because he
once followed a trade. How do house-painters feel about it, I wonder? If I
knew any, I'd ask 'em."

"I do know some, so I will ask 'em."

"And then tell me? Well, anyhow, you can imagine that sort of remark
didn't do her husband any good professionally."

"Aye, I can see that."

They were still at the kerbside, but a Government car had driven up and
the chauffeur was waiting. Millbay said hastily: "Sorry there hasn't been
more time to talk. Always interesting to compare notes about people one
knows... Incidentally, if you're free tonight, why don't you dine with me?
Then we'd have more time."

George was free and accepted, though not without a misgiving that grew and
crystallized during the afternoon into a determination to pursue a certain
course of action if Millbay should make it necessary. Before they were
halfway through the meal, at a service flat in Smith Square, Millbay HAD made
it necessary. They had discussed general topics at first, but then Millbay
had continued: "You know, Boswell, I'm still a bit curious about Livia
Winslow. She always rather fascinated me, in a sort of way, and to meet
someone else who knew her... well, I suppose it's the novelist in me cropping
up again, even though it's years since I last published anything. And I
certainly don't intend to publish anything you tell me, so don't worry."

"Anything I tell you?"

"Yes—if you feel like it. I wish you would."

"About what?"

"About Livia... that is, of course, unless you'd rather not discuss
her."

George then said what he had made up his mind to say if this situation
should arise. He said: "I don't mind discussing her, but I'd better tell you
something in advance. I was once married to her."

"GOOD GOD! You don't say?"

Till then George had felt slightly uncomfortable, but now, relaxed by his
own candour, he could almost enjoy the other's unbounded astonishment. He
grinned across the table. "I dunno why I felt I had to tell you, but now I
have done, I hope you'll go ahead and give me any more news you have about
her."

"So you're just as interested as I am?"

"Probably. That's rather natural, isn't it?"

"You haven't kept in touch with her at all?"

"No—not since..." He left the sentence unfinished.

"And that was—when?"

"September First, Nineteen-Twenty-One."

"Well remembered, eh?"

George nodded.

Millbay gave him a slow, shrewd glance, then continued: "Jeffrey happens
to be a friend of mine... Would you like me to talk about his marriage?"

"Aye—if YOU feel like it."

"And you won't mind if I'm frank?"

"We'd both be wasting our time if you weren't, wouldn't we?"

"Glad you think so. And in exchange will you give me your own frank
opinion... afterwards?"

* * * * *

I first met Jeffrey Winslow, Millbay said, in connection
with the Kemalpan
affair. I don't suppose you heard much about that. It didn't get publicized.
Things like it are always apt to happen, and to happen with the same
declension of eventfulness—that is to say, they begin excitingly
—bloodshed in the jungle, perhaps—and end a year or so later with
quiet voices pronouncing judgment across some departmental desk-top in
Whitehall. Mine was one of the quiet voices; I had all the papers relating to
the affair before me, and I'd given several days to the most careful study of
them. After all, you don't squash a man's career without good reason,
especially if he belongs to a family like the Winslows. I was as tactful as I
could be. I rather liked the look of the fellow from the outset; he was
neither truculent nor obsequious, and heaven knows he could have been either.
He just sat at the other side of the desk—a little nervous, as was
natural; he answered questions briefly and clearly, and there was a pleasant
ring in his voice that I would have taken for sincerity had not the
circumstances of the moment put doubts in my mind.

Of course the Kemalpan affair needs some explanation—that is, if you
don't already know about it. (George said he didn't.) Oh, well, I can put it
in a few sentences. Kemalpan is a technically independent Sultanate that the
British Government has a treaty with; Jeffrey Winslow was adviser to the
Sultan on matters connected with imperial relations—somewhat of a
nebulous job, but semi-diplomatic, with tentacles reaching into commercial
and military spheres. Decidedly no plum—but not badly paid, and easy
enough, as a rule, if you didn't mind burying yourself in a place like
Kemalpan. That, I should add, is the name of the capital city as well as of
the state; the capital is inland, in the midst of jungle and rubber
plantations; Winslow preferred to live with his wife at a settlement on the
coast fifty miles away—healthier there, or so he reckoned. There's a
telegraph line between the coast and the capital, and a sort of rough trail
that you can drive over in a Ford—but no good roads, no railway, and in
those days no air line. These details are important in view of what happened.
Also I should add that a small colony of British and Dutch rubber planters
lived on their estates near the inland capital, and were on good terms with
the Sultan, whose subjects they employed. The Sultan didn't mind low wages
for the tappers so long as he got a cut of the plantation profits
—which he did, more or less, in the form of thoroughly legalized
taxation. Quite a nice set-up as long as it lasted, and it lasted throughout
the twenties, when rubber rose to four shillings a pound; but later the fall
to sixpence led to labour troubles, and by the mid-thirties these had reached
danger-point. All this is necessary to give the background to what happened
in October 'thirty-four, when an insurrection in the capital threatened to
depose the Sultan in favour of some native 'leader' whom the planters called
a Communist—it's a conditioned reflex, you know. But it was true that
the plantations couldn't pay higher wages without going bankrupt, and equally
true that the mob was in a mood to overthrow things if the millennium didn't
appear overnight. The Sultan, who was a sly old debauchee with no real
interest in life but graft and women, rapidly slipped into panic; meanwhile
the planters with their wives and families moved in from outlying districts
to seek protection in the royal palace—protection being a few hundred
of the Sultan's private army, poor in quality and doubtful in allegiance.

The crisis developed within a matter of hours, while the Winslows were at
their home on the coast; Winslow wired the news to London, which was part of
his job, and was told to await instructions. A day later those instructions
were sent. He was told to assure the Sultan that the British Government would
back him to the full in suppressing the revolt, and that therefore the
capital must be held at all costs until such assistance was
forthcoming...

Now this was the point. Those instructions were SENT, and we had evidence
later that they reached the coast settlement where Winslow lived; but he
swore he never got them. Thus he didn't give the Sultan any assurance of
British help and the Sultan promptly gave in to the rebels. There followed a
nasty little affray at the palace in which three white men and two white
women were butchered. Well, that was the Kemalpan affair... nothing very
remarkable, but thoroughly reprehensible from every official standpoint, and
a year later we were still holding enquiries about it in Whitehall, still
collecting more evidence that the instructions to Winslow had actually been
transmitted and must have been received by him, though he still swore that
they hadn't.

A further point cropped up: the telegraph line from the coast to the
inland capital had been cut, so that if Winslow HAD received his orders he
could only have properly obeyed them by making the fifty-mile trip in person
over the rough trail; and this, with most of the intervening country in the
hands of the rebels, might not have been so safe. In fact, it might have been
decidedly unsafe—which was why he couldn't have relied on anyone else
to do the job. So you see where all this is leading... and where it had
already led on that foggy Friday in November 'thirty-five when I first talked
to the fellow in my office. Was his denial of having received instructions
just the only thing he could think of as an excuse for having been scared? If
that were the true interpretation, it added up to something rather
serious.

You know, it's a queer thing when you have to talk to a gentleman in the
social sense who has somehow broken the code of a gentleman in the ethical
sense. You can never quite come to grips with the situation. You fence and
evade and know that he knows all the time what you're really thinking. I
never, for instance, came anywhere near hinting to Winslow that he might be
both a liar and a coward, yet he must have known that that was the inevitable
implication behind all the questioning. And presently it all boiled down to
that simple question: Had he or had he not received those instructions? He
stuck to it that he hadn't, and he sounded convincing, but long experience
has left me with the opinion that lies are, if anything, easier to tell
convincingly than the truth. Besides, evidence that the instructions HAD
reached him was almost watertight, so I had to accept it. But of course I did
not say so. I said, quietly and politely: "Well, Winslow, we seem to have
reached a deadlock. Maybe there'll be some further evidence... if so, perhaps
you'll be good enough to come here again."

He answered then, with a certain austere dignity which I liked (whether he
were a liar and a coward or not): "Of course I will, but it's nine months now
since I was advised to come home on leave, and since then I've been kept
waiting for the enquiry to finish. It's rather a strain, in some ways.
Besides, I should very much like to go back to my job."

It was then my duty to tell him that there was little chance of his ever
resuming that kind of job under Government service. He took it very well. He
said he was sorry—which I knew did not mean any kind of confession, but
merely that the outcome was a blow to him. I said I was sorry too— and
by that I did not mean that as a liar and a coward he deserved any special
leniency, but merely that it grieved me, as a member of the so-called ruling
class, to see another member acquitting himself out of style. You see what
snobs we all are... Anyhow, I shook hands with him and wished him well and
didn't expect to see him again.

But I just couldn't get the fellow out of my mind. He'd interested me
—not only because the departure from tradition is always more
interesting than the tradition itself, of which one gets a little bored when
one is, as I am, a somewhat cynical conformist. I should be believed, no
doubt, if I said that after talking to Winslow I paced up and down my office
floor wondering if, in his place, I should have behaved any better. Yet
actually I didn't wonder at all, because I knew. I have fought in wars, and
there have been several occasions on which I risked my life, not because I
was brave, nor because I hated the enemy, but because risking my life was the
thing to do in those particular circumstances, and all my training had been
to make me act both accordingly and automatically. That's one of the reasons
why Winslow interested me—because his training had been, if anything,
more traditional than mine. Who's Who and Debrett were sufficient authorities
for that. He'd been to a good public school and to Oxford, had then passed
into the Diplomatic and been an attaché at various European embassies. Quite
brilliant at Oxford, by the way, and with his family connections he must have
been exactly the type for whom one would forecast a distinguished future. All
of which added to the mystery—for why, if one came to think of it,
should such a fellow ever fetch up at Kemalpan? That was decidedly NOT the
thing to have done... and since it was unlikely that anybody would take
Kemalpan from choice, what had forced him into it? Well, there were people I
knew who could throw out a few hints. Our friend Sprigge is the expert there.
Scandals, women, mésalliances, bad cheques —he can usually tell you. In
Winslow's case it was a divorce— which in those prim days didn't help
anyone... and I needn't say more about that to you.

I also discovered that Winslow had written a book of essays on moral
philosophy that had attracted some attention in its field, and might have led
to a useful subsidiary reputation had not his main career gone off at such a
tangent. I was interested enough to get hold of the book. I found it a bit
above my head, but I thought it showed signs of a first-class mind, and
first-class minds are such rare things in our time and land that it becomes a
crime, in my opinion, to frustrate, side-track, or otherwise stultify them.
And his, at least, had been side-tracked at Kemalpan, for—apart from
the career—there had been no succeeding books.

During the following months a trickle of further evidence came in, but
none of it helpful to his case. A Chinese clerk reported that he had
personally delivered the coded cable message from the telegraph station to
Winslow's bungalow, where he had handed it to a responsible servant; the
servant said Winslow was out at the time, so he had placed it on his desk
along with other messages and letters... The case also began to look blacker
from another angle, for at the time the message was received it was known at
the coast settlement that the lives of white refugees in the Sultan's palace
were endangered, so that if Winslow had been concerned with his own personal
safety he must also have weighed it against the safety of others. About
twenty, to be precise—including women and children. And to complete the
indictment, it seemed reasonably probable that if he had managed to get the
message through to the Sultan, the latter would have put up a defence instead
of a surrender, and the five lives might have been saved. Altogether there
was very little excuse for Winslow, and when, just about the time this latter
evidence came in, I got a letter from him in Ireland I was in a rather
unsympathetic mood for considering it, especially as the first few sentences
showed me he was asking the impossible. Briefly, he wanted a job. Not, of
course, the same job in Kemalpan, or even that kind of job in that kind of
place; yet, he argued, could not a decade of experience in the Far East, plus
the knowledge of several obscure languages and dialects, be put to some use
somehow and somewhere? What he hinted at was a job in some Government office,
where he could continue in the public service, however humbly.

I wrote back and told him how little chance he had. And a week later Mrs.
Winslow herself came to see me.

It was another interesting meeting. I had heard of this Mrs. Winslow once
before, in connection with her oft-quoted and misquoted remark about Hitler
at the Batavia dinner-party; I hadn't disliked her for that (because it
seemed to me she had probably been misunderstood), but it had given me an
impression that she was a dangerous partner for a man of affairs. And now,
when I saw her across my desk, I was immediately struck by a certain
controlled intention in her whole look and attitude. She faced me as if she
knew what she wanted and meant to get her own way at all costs. After a mere
good-morning she plunged right in—couldn't I possibly find her husband
some desk job in Whitehall? Apparently my letter had been the final blow to
his hopes, and she was afraid of a breakdown if he didn't find some work
where he felt he could be useful. And though she herself preferred to live in
Ireland, she would not say no to London if Jeffrey had to be there. She
talked of living in London as a sort of sacrifice she would make for her
husband if the Government in return would do its part.

I told her flatly it was impossible, and when she stressed the personal
angle I delicately hinted that Government posts were not handed out to
prevent breakdowns. The Kemalpan incident, I said, was of a kind that they
must both recognize had called at least a halt to Jeffrey's career. At that
she began to protest and argue, but of course I wouldn't go over all the
details with her. "Even assuming some tragic mistake, one can do nothing
about it now. Men's careers have been ruined before by mistakes—it
would be nothing new."

"You look at it very coldly," she said.

"I look at it very logically," I answered. "The whole incident, affair, or
whatever you call it, is closed now and can't be reopened unless some totally
new item of evidence should crop up. And that's so unlikely that we can
almost say it won't happen."

She then said quietly: "It can happen. That's what I came here for—
to tell you something. It was I who intercepted the cable. I decoded it,
found out what it meant, then decided that Jeffrey shouldn't ever see it. Of
course he doesn't know I did that, or that I'm admitting it now to you."

She waited for me to show surprise, and perhaps I did, but it was not
surprise at what she said so much as surprise that she should expect me to
believe it. Naturally I didn't. But it would have been equally unwise to
dismiss the matter without further probing.

"What made you do such a thing?" I asked guardedly.

"I just had to," she answered. "The telegraph line was cut, so I knew he'd
want to take the message himself, and as the country was in the hands of the
rebels I didn't think he'd have much chance of getting through. And he might
have got killed."

"He might," I agreed. "And five others did."

She said nothing.

"Probably as a result of the message not being delivered."

"I wouldn't say PROBABLY. POSSIBLY."

"You knew the planters and their families were in danger when you
intercepted the message?"

"Yes."

"And you deliberately let them take their chance in order to ensure your
husband's personal safety?"

"Yes."

"Don't you think that rather indefensible?"

"I'm not defending it. I'm just saying it's what I did. My husband was
dearer to me than a crowd of people I didn't know."

"How many people would you be willing to sacrifice for such a reason?"

She didn't answer.

I went on, with more sarcasm: "Or shall I put it this way—at what
point would the lives of strangers, by sheer weight of numbers, tilt the
balance against the life of the man you love?"

She answered: "Never."

"So you'd sacrifice millions, if one can conceive of such a
situation?"

She nodded.

She really was at this point beginning to surprise me. It's rare that
people, especially women, are willing to let a logical point be pressed home.
I said, rather severely: "I'm glad to think you are probably unique in
looking at things that way."

"Oh, but I'm not," she answered. "In war-time wouldn't you press a button,
if you could, to destroy a million of the enemy rather than lose a single
life on your side?"

"But this wasn't war-time."

"When you love somebody it's always war-time."

"When YOU love somebody, maybe."

She nodded. "Then why is my attitude so extraordinary?"

What WAS extraordinary, of course, was her argument, and it was one that
didn't seem to me profitable to continue. I was still disinclined to believe
her confession, but I was clear in my mind as to the implications of the
alternatives. Either she was lying to save her husband's reputation— in
which case one could possibly like her for it; or she had actually told the
truth—in which case she was ruthless, unprincipled, and wholly the kind
of wife whom a man in a responsible position should not have.

But in any case nothing could be done. Even if her confession were
accepted at its face value it would not help Jeffrey to get his job back. The
most it could do would be to win him a measure of half- incredulous
sympathy.

I explained all this to her, and it seemed to me that she picked up the
cue, as it were, and from then on made a bid for the sympathy. Jeffrey, she
repeated, was on the verge of a breakdown. All he asked was some job, however
small and ill-paid, just to give him the feeling—perhaps even the
illusion—that he had not been dishonourably discharged. It had even
come to the point, she said, that their marriage might founder if he could
not get such a job; he was finding it hard to settle down in Ireland, and the
book he was trying to write was not going well. This was the first I had
heard about another book and I asked her for details. She said it was a book
about the Far East—one he had long projected—something rather
scholarly and definitive. She had been urging him to use up his time that way
ever since he came home, and surely conditions in Ireland were ideal for
authorship—a quiet place in the country, nothing else to do, and ample
money to live on. "Really," she added, "he's quite well off— there's no
reason why he should worry about a career, or about writing books either, so
far as that goes. The whole Kemalpan business wouldn't matter if only he
didn't think it mattered."

"Perhaps, though, the relatives of the people who were killed there might
still think it mattered."

"Oh, THEM. I wasn't thinking about THEM."

And she wasn't. She was just thinking of herself and Jeffrey. That seemed
to close the argument quite finally. I got up and made it clear that there
was nothing more I could say or do.

During the next few weeks I found myself thinking even more compellingly
about the Winslows. First, HE had interested me, then she; but now my
interest in each of them separately was more than redoubled in them both.
What went on between such a pair? What sort of thing was their life together?
If she had been lying on his behalf, it was possible that the appalling
selfishness of her argument might not have been sincere. Or had she been
telling the truth, both as to fact and attitude? To summarize it another way:
if she were a liar, one liked her better and her husband less; but if she
were not a liar, one disliked her intensely and felt sympathy for her
husband. And I still could not properly make up my mind. I have rarely been
so puzzled about anything. Then suddenly more evidence filtered through
—I needn't go into details, but it was of a kind that weighed down one
of the scales pretty conclusively. She HAD told the truth. She HAD
intercepted the message. Which meant that Jeffrey himself was neither a liar
nor a coward, but at worst a victim.

The revelation swung me into a mood in which I recollected our meeting and
how much, from first appearance, I had liked him. I remembered his quietness,
his austere dignity, the simple unassumingness which, I knew, concealed a
mind whose quality had been demonstrated. So on impulse I wrote him a
friendly letter, saying nothing much except that I hoped he was getting on
all right and that if he ever visited London he might find time to have lunch
with me. To my surprise he answered by return and took the invitation with
far more seriousness than I should have thought. He would have been so glad,
he said, to come to London and see me (I hadn't suggested that, by any
means), but he was not very well and couldn't get away... would I, however,
visit him in Ireland—stay a week or two—there was good shooting,
fishing, climbing, if that sort of thing appealed to me? He would be very
happy, and please make it soon, because the late summer (and it was then
August) was perhaps the best time of the year at Carrigole.

It happened that I had not had a holiday that year, and though the idea of
visiting the Winslows seemed quite fantastic at first, I soon found myself
thinking of reasons why I might take Jeffrey at his word. After all, I liked
him; it might even be that if he were feeling low-spirited I could help him
by talk and companionship. But I will not disguise that my overmastering
motive was sheer curiosity. I wanted to find out what sort of people they
both were, in their own home and with their own domestic problems. And at
least it could do no harm to call on them if I happened to be holiday-making
thereabouts.

So I looked up Carrigole on the map and found it was a dozen miles from
Galway—a small place, not very accessible, in a district of lakes and
mountains. And that's why I asked you, Boswell, if you ever knew the Winslows
in Ireland, because I should have liked your opinion of Carrigole.

It began to rain when I first came within sight of it. I had hired a car
for the last stage of the trip and all the way I felt oddly excited about
getting there. Actually I had never been in Ireland before, and crossing the
country from Dublin it had occurred to me that even the trains were antique
—and not contemptibly, as on so many outdated railways all over the
world, but honourably, with dignity, like good sound Victorian mahogany
furniture. And when, at Galway, my train reached its destination, there was
again the contrast with other rail-heads I had seen; for here was no mere
petering out into obscurity, but a grand finale in stone—the massive
quayside station, far too large and almost quiet as a cathedral, shaking a
granite fist into the sea.

But my first glimpse of Carrigole was equally memorable—or perhaps
the mood I was in gave me extra percipience—a kind of mystic awareness
I am naturally distrustful of, but can't deny exists, at certain rare times
and places. I knew Ireland was supposed to be like that, and therefore I was
perversely surprised to find it so. Through the rainswept windows of the car
I saw blue smoke drifting over the roofs of whitewashed cottages, and beyond
them a mountain rising into clouds that totally covered the summit. I
gathered, from the map on my knee, that this must be Slieve Baragh, not much
higher than a hill, yet as I saw it then for the first time it seemed in
another world of measurement. Presently the car slowed down for the village,
and here the swollen clouds dipped lower, bringing no raindrops but emptying
silently; Slieve Baragh was now hidden behind a curtain that suggested
Himalayan heights—and yet, I remembered again, it was not much of a
mountain—a mere two thousand feet. I couldn't help making other mental
notes of the near and the practical—the uneven walls and mud-brown
pavements, the butcher who called himself a 'flesher' and the chemist's shop
magnificently styled a 'Medical Hall'. I wound down the side window to catch
the whiff of peat on the wet breeze as the car bumped over a bridge across a
river—only a minor river, like the minor mountain, but turbulent now as
it filled almost directly from the sky.

A mile or so past the village the Winslows' house stood behind a drenched
garden, and Jeffrey was waiting at the gate in the rain. He looked pale and
worn, and there was intense nervousness in the way he greeted me.

I ought to describe the house; it was substantially built, thick- walled
and small-windowed, in a style conditioned by roaring Atlantic gales for half
the year, and political troubles for half a century. These indeed had left
the house with its most conspicuous attribute—a large, burnt-out wing,
blackened and roofless, which provided a ready topic of conversation. "They
tried to burn the whole place down in 'twenty-two," Jeffrey explained. "Livy
got it cheap because it hadn't been lived in since then and needed so much
repairing, but part of it's beyond repair—it would be too large for us,
anyway. We have a couple of servants and the boy when he's home from
school—that only makes five..."

By then we were in the square hall, from which the main rooms of the house
opened on all sides, and it was there that Livia met me. Perhaps because of
the dark afternoon it seemed to me that she appeared from nowhere, a sudden
distillation of shadows. I was not surprised when she greeted me as a
stranger, allowing Jeffrey to make the unnecessary introduction. I played up
accordingly and thought it equally unnecessary when, a few minutes later in
the bedroom I had been shown to, she closed the door behind her and said with
a sort of conspiratory quietness: "Jeffrey still doesn't know I came to see
you in London."

I nodded and said I would have surmised that he didn't.

"And of course he doesn't know anything else either."

I knew what she meant, and I nodded to that also.

"I hope you won't ever repeat what I told you in confidence," she went
on.

I said temporizingly and in the bland way which I have cultivated as part
of my official equipment: "My dear Mrs. Winslow, I wasn't aware that you were
telling me anything in confidence, but as a matter of fact I don't usually
gossip." I added, to change the subject: "It's so kind of you to have me
here, and I hope it isn't too much trouble."

"Not at all," she answered, with cold politeness. "You're on your way to
Limerick, aren't you?"

That was as broad a hint as I needed, and clear proof of what I had
already guessed—that she didn't want me to stay, and that Jeffrey had
invited me either without her knowledge or against her wishes. I had guessed
this subconsciously enough to have wired my time of arrival too late for any
cancellation of the invitation—and, as it happened, too late even for
Jeffrey to meet me at Galway.

"Yes," I said. "I'm on my way to Limerick."

I had a bath, changed into drier tweeds, and went down to dinner. I met
the boy then, Charles I think his name was—a youth of thirteen, at
Charterhouse—tall, good-looking, shy, likable. Intelligent, too, as I
discovered after a few casual remarks. He was piling turf on the
old-fashioned fire as I entered, for it was chilly enough to have one, and
that set us talking of turf and electricity, old and new, the Shannon
hydro-electric scheme and the ancient Irish tongue that nobody spoke except
illiterate peasants and modern school teachers. Livia then said: "We're all
half mad with our opposites," which seemed to end rather than clinch any
discussion. She had a curious way of saying things that were never quite
clear, yet never so meaningless as to be easy to ignore. Jeffrey noticed my
interest in the boy and soon found a chance to tell me, like any other proud
father, that Charlie was keen on music and by no means a bad piano-player. We
went on chatting desultorily throughout the meal; then the boy made a polite
excuse and left us three adults together. I somehow had an impression that he
got on better with his father than with Livia, accepting the shy approach
more readily than the frontal assault; and it has amused me since to reflect
that Livia ranged against the polite taboos of the English public-school
system would be a unique example of an irresistible force meeting an
immovable body.

After he had gone there was a change of atmosphere that became almost
baleful; it had been tense before, but now it was menacing, a curious
hostility between Jeffrey and Livia that was due, I could not help feeling,
to my own presence. A sort of invisible cat crouching on the table-top to
spring at any of our throats at an unknown signal—if the metaphor isn't
too far-fetched. In an attempt to ease the conversation into some harmless
groove I said, unimportantly: "It's probably not a good day to sight-see, but
I did at least get a good whiff of Ireland as I drove over."

Livia answered, as if she must dispute with me at all costs: "It IS a good
day to sight-see. Ireland's a sad country, so you see it best when it looks
sad, but the sadness is alive—it comes out of the earth—it isn't
like the dead sadness of London, especially the West End."

"Oh, come now," I said facetiously. "The Café Royal at midnight hasn't got
much dead sadness."

"Jeff and I love it here," she went on defensively, as if I had ever
denied it. "That is, he could if he wanted to," she added, as if Jeffrey had
ever denied it.

"But what do you do all the time?" I asked, still facetiously.

"Livy looks after the farm," Jeffrey answered. "She likes that sort of
work, though it's not very good land—far too stony, and the gales come
in full of salt spray that sours the soil... I'll take you round
tomorrow."

"Mr. Millbay won't have time," Livia said pointedly. "He's got to leave
for Limerick tomorrow." She added: "Jeffrey's busy too. He has to write his
book."

"If he can," Jeffrey commented, with a note of ruefulness.

"He doesn't concentrate enough," she countered. They were both talking at
each other, it seemed, with me as a needed yet somehow exacerbating
audience.

The question of the book raised Jeffrey a notch higher in whatever emotion
was being generated between them. "Livy," he said, "appears to think that
writing is just a simple matter of one page after another."

"Well, isn't it?" Livia asked, appealing to me.

I tried to lower the tension by asking Jeffrey how far the book had
progressed.

Livia answered for him: "About a hundred pages, and it ought to be easy
for him to finish because it's all about Far Eastern affairs that he's an
expert on."

Jeffrey said, still in the same mood of self-scarifying irony: "Livy
thinks that with a record like mine people will be eager to accept me as an
authority."

I gathered that this had been argued between them before, since Livia
retorted: "What does his record have to do with what he writes?... That's
what I always ask him."

Jeffrey nodded. "Yes, that's what she always asks me, and I think the
answer is rather obvious. Wouldn't you say so, Millbay?"

I didn't want to get into such an argument, so I said nothing.

Livia went on, as if even my silence irritated her: "And what OF his
record, anyway? Who bothers about it except a few people in the
Government?"

Jeffrey answered, heavily: "I think Charlie would bother about it if he
knew—and perhaps he does know, or can guess."

"Charlie has no right to be ashamed of his father," Livia retorted, and
then she added astoundingly: "My father spent twelve years in jail and
I wasn't ashamed of HIM."

I hadn't known about that, and made up my mind to look into the matter
when I got back to London. And of course I afterwards found who her father
had been. But in the meantime I felt I had to be honest and side with Jeffrey
about the book. He was undoubtedly right, and his Far Eastern opus, however
good, might well fall under the curse of Kemalpan—the more so since, if
it were very good indeed, it might even attract publicity to what would
otherwise have been ignored or forgotten. I didn't bring up that point, but
my general support of Jeffrey's attitude led to what I had feared—and
that was the whole Kemalpan issue spouting up like a volcano. Jeffrey
muttered gloomily that he wondered if it were worth while even to finish the
book at all, what he really wanted was a job, something he could work at to
prove himself more than a failure and an idler. A job, a job... to get away
from the everlasting western gales and the stony soured soil and the clouds
dripping over the mountain and nothing to do... nothing to do...

I could feel the tension mounting now like a physical wave through the
shadows, and again to ease it I said: "You know, Jeffrey, there ARE jobs, if
you really want one. It wouldn't have to be in Government service. Your Far
Eastern experience would be a bargain for a good commercial firm, and it's
true, as you know, that a man can serve his country in, say, British-American
Tobacco quite as valuably as in an embassy."

I saw his eyes light up at that. "Do you think they'd even consider
me?"

But then a strange and disconcerting thing happened. Livia got up from her
chair and leaned across the table towards us with a gleam in her eyes that
was of a very different kind. It gave her face a rather frightening radiance,
emphasizing the curious profile of nose and forehead as she stared down at us
like, I thought, the figurehead of a ship about to dive into a storm. "He's
not going!" she screamed, in a wild angry whisper. "He must stay HERE. This
is the place for him... ALWAYS..."

After that there was little I could say. The scene subsided, leaving us to
stammer a few commonplaces about this and that; Livia seemed to realize she
had said too much, or had somehow been caught off-guard.

We adjourned to the drawing-room and sat up, the three of us, till it
became clear that Jeffrey wanted to talk to me alone if there were any
chance. Towards midnight I began yawning, to bring the thing to an issue, and
Livia said it was time we all went to bed; whereupon Jeffrey announced that
he and I would stay up and chat for a while. He said that with an air of
challenge, and there was nothing much she could do about it except leave us
together. Such a small victory, and yet, from his whole attitude, I gathered
it was both a narrow and a crucial one.

When we were alone he asked me again about the possibility of a commercial
job—had I meant what I said—did I really think there was a chance
of it?—Certainly, I answered, if that was what he really wanted, and I
offered there and then to put in a good word for him. But the imminence of
something practical and decisive seemed to reverse his mood and deflate his
eagerness, so that I told him to think it over carefully; maybe he didn't
want to go as much as he thought he did. He answered, far TOO carefully: "I'd
go like a shot but for Livy."

Then he lapsed into a mumble of pitiful things about her—almost as
if he had learned most of them by heart and were repeating them as much for
his own benefit as for mine. She would be dead against his going abroad
again; she had spent ten years in Malaya and that was understandably as much
as she wanted; she loved Ireland and the farm; she worked so hard, was so
good to him, they really got on all right together despite occasional
bickerings... and so on.

And of course, knowing what I did, it antagonized me to the point of
saying: "So you really mean you'll stay here for the rest of your life just
to please her?"

He answered: "Perhaps I ought to stay here. After all, she's been very
decent about the whole thing. The Kemalpan business, I mean. She's never
reproached me about it."

That did the trick. Accustomed as I am to the severest verbal self-
discipline I simply couldn't keep back my answer. "By God," I exclaimed, "she
damn well oughtn't to, since she was the whole cause of it herself!"

Then I told him what I hadn't promised Livia not to tell him, though I
should have broken that promise anyway.

Of course he was appalled. He wouldn't believe it at first, even when I
said I had documents, depositions, and so on, that I could send or show him
later. "Besides," I said, "she confessed to it even before there was proof."
That appalled him also, and I had to tell him about her visit to my office.
When he still seemed unable or unwilling to grasp the situation, I said: "You
mean you don't think she's capable of it?"

He answered heavily: "She's capable of anything." And then he went on with
a touch of anger: "Why did you tell me? Do you want me to think badly of her?
After all, though what she did was quite dreadful, it only shows how much she
loves me... in her way."

"Certainly, if you think so," I answered. "She shows she loves you by
ruining your career—to say nothing of sacrificing the lives of five
strangers. I didn't intend to say all this when I came here, and I admit I
acted on impulse in doing so, but now I'm rather glad I did." I thought it
was a good moment then to say good-night and tell him I'd be leaving in the
morning early. "Perhaps there's somewhere in the village I can hire a car to
take me on to Limerick..." He said there was, and pulled himself together
enough to telephone about it. Then he took me up to my room. At the door we
shook hands and I repeated my offer to try to find him a commercial job if he
wanted one. I also said that in any case I hoped he'd give me a ring if ever
he were in London.

I slept badly and got up soon after dawn. The mists were over the mountain
and a gale from the sea was already tearing them to shreds. I did not think
Carrigole was a place I should like to stay in for long, much less to live in
altogether. There was something elemental and primitive about it that would
get on my nerves unless I could become elemental and primitive myself.

The car had already arrived and stood in the lane beyond the garden, but
as I was crossing the latter from the house I saw Livia hurrying towards me
from a side gate. She was dressed in a sort of waterproof smock, tied loosely
at the waist; her head was almost hidden behind a low-brimmed sou-wester, and
she wore also knee-high boots caked with mud. I don't know why I remember
such things, except that I was aware of a curious half-hypnotized tension
that made me stir my mind over details to keep it from somehow freezing at
her approach.

I was prepared for a scene, but there was none. "So you're going now?" she
greeted me.

I said I had thought it better to leave early, so as to reach Limerick by
midday.

"Why, yes, of course. Much better. I'm always up like this. There's so
much to be done on a farm."

I said I was sure she was kept very busy.

"Of course Jeff's still asleep," she went on. "Nine's early enough for him
to start writing, don't you think?" And then, with a bright smile: "What time
would YOU begin writing if you were a writer?"

I answered, smiling back: "Any time I damn well felt like it—and I
speak with authority because I AM a writer." She didn't seem to take offence
—and yet I knew, from something in her eyes, that Jeffrey had told her
I had told him everything, and that she hated me for it. And I had a feeling
that to be hated by Livia Winslow was no mild experience.

She accompanied me to the car. "Jeff is really happy here," she said, as
if I were again denying the fact. "And no wonder, is it?" And then she added,
in a phrase I remember because I wasn't quite sure what it meant: "When I
first saw this place I thought I had found where I was born in another
world..."

So I finished my Irish holiday and returned to London with such thoughts
about the Winslows as you can imagine. Some months later Jeffrey rang me up
at my office, the tone of his voice conveying a certain urgency, but also, I
thought, a very welcome quality of decision. He sounded like a man who had
finally yet in a sense firmly reached the end of his tether. We lunched at my
club, and afterwards he asked if my offer to aid him in finding a job still
held.

Not only it did, I told him, but it so happened that a few days before I
had mentioned his name to a friend in one of the big oil companies, and the
reaction had been distinctly favourable. "Only I didn't know whether you'd
changed your mind, so I hardly cared to approach you about it."

"I'll take the job whatever it is," he said. "Where do I go and when can I
start?"

"Look here," I answered, "I don't own the company. You'll have to fix all
that yourself—but if you like I can telephone my friend this afternoon
and let him know you're in town. I should imagine, from the way he talked,
that it would be something fairly immediate, and he did also tell me where it
was... Hong Kong... How does that suit? You speak Cantonese?"

He said he did.

"They'll probably jump at you then."

He seemed so relieved that I told him how glad I was to see him in such a
different mood from the last time we had talked.

"Yes," he said. "You can call it that if you like—a different
mood."

I asked him what had happened to make the change, and then he told me
something so extraordinary that if I hadn't known enough about Livia
beforehand I should have disbelieved it, or him, or both of them, and even
now I'm not a hundred per cent certain. It seemed that after my one-night
visit they had had many arguments about his taking another job abroad, Livia
becoming more and more obstinate in her insistence that he should stay at
Carrigole. It was almost as if she had some obsession about the place—
and perhaps, for that matter, she had. Most of her ideas were obsessions,
anyhow, just as most of her affections were passions—she did nothing by
halves. In such an atmosphere as had developed between them Jeffrey found it
impossible to write his book and presently did not even wish to; what he
craved was a job, and that too was for him an obsession. Their disagreements
had culminated, he said, in an angry scene in which she accused him of
pretending to want the job when what he really wanted was to leave her; this
he denied emphatically, but in the very act of doing so caught himself
wondering if it were half true. And then she staged an astonishing climax.
She told him she would never leave him, that she loved him too much, that
wherever he went she would follow, and that rather than lose him she would
kill anyone who stood in the way of their life together. He took that for
melodrama till she added, with a terrifying sort of casualness: "I did that
once, you know."

He thought she meant the five victims at Kemalpan, and though he knew she
could be held accountable for their deaths, he thought it was going too far
to say that she had actually killed them. But then she always did go too far,
and he always tried to drag her back by being severely and irritatingly
logical; it was almost a routine. So he said: "Oh, come now, don't put it
that way. They might have lost their lives in any event."

"THEY?" she echoed. And then it turned out that she hadn't been thinking
of Kemalpan at all. "Then who?" he asked, puzzled but also wryly amused.

"Don't you remember Anne Westerholme?" she answered.

He told me that when she spoke that name he first had to make an effort to
recollect it, but that when he did so he felt himself growing pale and cold
with an emotion he would have called fear, except that he had known fear
before, and this was nothing like it.

He also told me about Anne Westerholme, and the story took him back almost
ten years, to the time when he was adviser to another Sultanate and lived
with Livia at a place called Tanjong Palai. It was not such a good job as the
one he obtained later, but the district was healthier and they had a pleasant
bungalow in the hills, with the usual neighbourhood society of tea and rubber
planters. One of these, a friend of Jeffrey's, was bringing out a young
governess from England to look after his three small boys, but as they
developed scarlet fever while she was en route he had arranged with the
Winslows that the girl should stay with them until the end of quarantine. So
Anne Westerholme arrived one afternoon at the Winslows' bungalow, and the
next morning she was dead. She had been bitten by a five-foot krait, the most
venomous of Malayan snakes, and as it could be surmised that she had opened
her bedroom window without fixing the screen there was no hitch in the
presumption of accidental death. Thousands die from snake-bite every year in
that part of the world; it was tragic, but hardly remarkable.

But now, a decade later, Livia had more to say about this, and what she
said was quite dreadful. She said that very early in the morning she had
entered the girl's room and seen her asleep with the krait curled up at the
foot of the bed. It would have been easy then to kill the snake (she had
killed scores) but she simply did not do so. She went back to the kitchen,
calmly gave the Chinese houseboy his daily orders, played some Mozart records
on the gramophone, and waited for the call that summoned her, along with the
servants, too late.

Jeffrey said that when she told him this, sitting over the turf fire at
Carrigole late one night, he was so horrified that it did not occur to him at
first that he had only her word for the story; but that later, when he did
realize that, his feelings of horror hardly diminished. He made her go to
bed, he said, and himself spent the night in his downstairs workroom,
arranging the manuscript of the book he knew he would never finish— not
at Carrigole, anyhow. And in the morning he took the train for Dublin en
route for Holyhead and London.

We sat over coffee in the club smoke-room discussing the matter throughout
most of the afternoon.

"But do you really think she was speaking the truth?" I asked.

"I think she could have been," he answered, with no kind of reluctance.
"But I also think she could have made up the story."

"But what motive could she possibly have had? A girl fresh from England
—how could Livia have had any concern with whether she lived or
died?"

"Jealousy," Jeffrey answered. "She saw in this girl some menace to her own
life with me—or so she said when she made the confession."

"But that's equally absurd!" I persisted. "How long had you known the
girl? A few hours, I suppose... Had you had any chance to... but of course
it's preposterous... and what sort of a girl was she? I suppose you hardly
remember—even the name didn't stay in your mind—"

Jeffrey nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, I'd almost forgotten that, but I do
remember HER—she had reddish hair and a rather calm face."

"Not pretty, though?"

"No, but calm... CALM."

"And Livia was with you the whole of the time—"

"Oh yes. The three of us just talked during dinner, that's all."

"Well, it's still absurd," I repeated. "Even for Livia it's absurd. How
could she possibly imagine there was anything for her to be jealous of?"

He nodded again, but then suddenly moved restlessly in the club armchair.
"You know," he said at length, "I'll be perfectly frank with you, since you
deserve that much for all you've done for me lately... It's true of course
that there was nothing between me and that girl. Yet... there almost might
have been... eventually. I knew that, in a queer sort of way, while we were
just chatting during dinner. Nothing special or exciting or significant or
provocative—and yet—and I was aware of it—that girl's
calmness came over to me... and Livy intercepted it, just as later on she
intercepted the cable." He got up, clenching and unclenching his hands.
"That's the really frightening thing about it," he exclaimed, when he had let
me order a second brandy. "Livy KNEW. She ALWAYS knew. She doesn't miss a
thing..."

The Mayor of Browdley sat for a long time in silence after Millbay had
finished. He was—and he was aware of it—a little out of his
depth. This world of rubber-planters and Sultans and five-foot kraits was so
foreign to him, or seemed so when he tried to get it into extempore focus;
how different from that other world of cotton mills and council meetings! And
yet, after all, it was the same world, governed by the same passions, the
same greeds, the same basic gulf between those who take and those who give.
True, there were no snakes in Browdley, but there was diphtheria that could
kill (and had killed, hadn't it?) just as effectively; and there had once
been a murder in a street not far from Mill Street, a particularly lurid
murder that had made headlines in all the Sunday papers. From Browdley to
Kemalpan and Tanjong Palai was only a matter of miles, but from Livia's mind
to his own... how far was that?

Millbay interrupted his musings. "Well, Boswell, you stipulated for my
story first. Now what about yours?"

George answered at length: "Aye... but I haven't one. Nothing to match
what you've told me, anyhow. I can't say I'm glad to have heard it, but it's
been good of you to give me so much time."

"No need to be grateful. I'd rather know how it all strikes you."

"That's just it," George answered. "It DOES strike me. It strikes me all
of a heap."

"You mean you don't altogether believe it?"

"I don't disbelieve it, because I've been struck all of a heap before by
some of the things Livia did."

"Oh, you have?"

"Aye... When she left me I was a bit like that for years. But I got over
it..."

And that was all. Millbay, though disappointed, was tactful enough not to
press him. "Seems to me," he said later, "that those who want to plan the
future with everything neatly laid out in squares and rectangles are going to
find the Livias of this world sticking out like a sore thumb."

"Maybe," replied George. "But maybe also if the world was planned a bit
better there wouldn't be so many Livias."

"You evidently accept that as a desirable state."

"Nay," said George quickly. "I'll not say too much against her. We had
some good times. And this jealousy you've talked about—I never noticed
it particularly..."

Millbay smiled. "May I be very personal?"

"Anything you want."

"It's perhaps such ancient history that you won't feel hurt if I suggest
it... that perhaps she wasn't as jealous in your case because she didn't...
love you... as much."

"Aye, that might have been it."

It was getting late and George took his leave soon after that. He thanked
Millbay again, walked from Smith Square to his hotel in a street behind the
Strand, and rather to his surprise slept well and did not dream. The next day
was a Saturday and he was busy at a conference. The conference was about
nothing more or less momentous than the coordination of local authorities in
the grouping of road-transport services throughout the northern industrial
areas; and George, again to his surprise, found it quite possible to
intervene in the discussion and secure for Browdley favourable treatment in
the proposed set-up. The conference then adjourned till Monday, and with a
day to spare George could not think of anything better to do than visit
Cambridge. He had never been there before, and thought it would be a good
opportunity to compare it with Oxford, which he had visited once, in a mood
of envy and adoration, thirty years earlier. So he took the train at
Liverpool Street and eventually arrived, after a journey in which war-time
and Sunday discomforts were incredibly combined, at a railway station whose
form and situation roused in him the most drastic instincts of the rebuilder.
He then took a bus into the town, got off at the Post Office, had a late and
rather bad lunch at a restaurant, and entered the nearest of the
colleges.

Here at last he felt an authentic thrill that years had scarcely dimmed;
for George still worshipped education and could still think nostalgically of
never-tasted joys. To be young, to live in one of these old colleges, to have
years for nothing but study, and then to emerge into the world's fray already
armoured with academic letters after one's name—this was the kind of
past George would like to have had for himself, and the kind of future he
would have wanted for his own boy, if his own boy had lived. The multiple
disillusionments of the inter-war years had not dulled this dream, because it
had been a dream only—for George, in Browdley, had never heard about
fully-trained university men having to cadge jobs as vacuum-cleaner salesmen.
So he could pass through the college archway and stare across the quadrangle
at sixteenth-century buildings with the feeling that here, at any rate, was
something almost perfect in a far from perfect world.

Civilian sightseers being rare in war-time, the college porter, scenting a
tip, came out of his office to ask George if he would like to be shown over.
George said yes, with some enthusiasm, and for the next hour was piloted
through various courts, and into a quiet garden containing a famous
mulberry-tree; he was also shown the rooms in which there had lived, during
the most impressionable years of their lives, such varied personages as John
Milton and Jan Smuts. George was entranced with all this, and by the time the
tour was completed had absorbed much assorted information about the habits of
undergraduates in pre-war days. It did not entirely conform to what he had
imagined, or even thought desirable. But perhaps after the war things would
be a little different in some respects. He soon found that everything the
porter was afraid of, he himself most warmly hoped for; and presently he
summed the man up as an incurable snob, of a kind almost never met in
Browdley. However, all that did not matter in war-time, since the man, from
his own statements, was an air-raid warden and doubtless doing his duty like
everyone else. George gave him five shillings, which he thought was enough;
and the man took it as if he thought it just about enough.

"By the way," George added, as an afterthought, "have you a list of all
the men in the University—not just this college only?"

He had, and George inspected it. It did not take him more than a moment to
find that Winslow was at St. Jude's. The porter then told him where St.
Jude's was and he walked there across the town.

* * * * *

He did not know whether he really intended to visit Winslow
or not, but as
he was strolling towards the College entrance he saw a man leaning on two
sticks walk out towards the kerb and there hesitate, as if uncertain whether
to risk crossing. George caught his glance from a distance and immediately
changed direction to help him; whereupon the man turned away, evidently
deciding not to cross after all. But the whole manoeuvre puzzled George, so
that he approached nevertheless and asked if he could be of any service. The
man was a tall young fellow in a rather ill-fitting tweed jacket and
grey-flannel trousers, with a hat turned down over his forehead in such a way
that, with the further obstruction of dark glasses, the face was hardly to be
seen.

Yet immediately—from some curious instinct rather than from any
arguable recognition—George knew who it was. He had never seen him
dressed before, or even standing up before, yet there was not a shadow of
doubt as he exclaimed: "Why, Charles..." and took the other's arm.

Charles stared at him for a moment before forcing a smile. "I—I
didn't expect you'd recognize me."

"Don't say you didn't want me to!"

"I won't say it if you'd rather not." The voice and the tone were ironic.
"What are you doing in these parts, anyhow?"

George explained and added heartily: "No need to ask what YOU'RE
doing."

"Isn't there? At present I'm going to have my hair cut by a barber who
most obligingly does it for me privately every third Sunday afternoon. I
can't face that sort of thing when there's the usual audience."

George nodded with understanding. "Then I mustn't keep you. But perhaps
afterwards... How about having a meal with me?"

Charles declined with a brusqueness that softened into an only slightly
irritated explanation that he hardly ever left the College after dusk. "For
one thing there's the damned black-out." And then, either shyly or grudgingly
(George could not be sure which): "I'm in Room D One in the First Court. Come
up tonight after dinner if you like. About eight."

George had been intending to return to London by the seven-thirty train,
but he cancelled the arrangement quickly enough to accept without an
appearance of hesitation. A later train, however inconvenient, would do all
right. He said: "Thanks, I will. And now, since you WERE wanting to cross the
street..."

He helped the boy as far as the opposite kerb, then left him after a few
conversational commonplaces. George's sense of timing was never, indeed, so
infallible as when he found himself up against that rare phenomenon—
someone who didn't seem particularly glad to see him.

He spent an hour or two in further sightseeing, then made his way to St.
Jude's after another bad meal. The night was cloudy, and the staircase
leading to D One proved hard to find, even by enquiry. To George's
astonishment, after he had knocked, the door was opened by a rather pretty
girl in nurse's uniform who admitted him to a large pleasant room in which
Charles, with one arm bared to the shoulder, had evidently been undergoing
some sort of treatment which George's arrival had interrupted. George
apologized for being early (though actually he was punctual), but Charles
assured him the job was finished and introduced the girl, who joined in
unimportant conversation while she packed her equipment. She seemed very
charming, friendly, and efficient, and George, whose mind always flew to
Browdley on the slightest provocation, wished he had her in the towns health
department. He had also noticed the state of the arm, and Charles, aware of
this, felt constrained to cover a certain embarrassment by making light of
it. "Still have to be patched up, but I'm sure a lot of fellows would envy me
the method." The girl laughed and made business-like arrangements for her
next visit. She demurred at first as George picked up her bag, but when he
insisted she let him carry it down the stairs. Outside the door he said: "It
isn't just that I'm being polite. I'd really like to know how that boy is,
and I thought you'd be the one to give me the true facts."

She replied calmly as they walked across the court and through the gateway
into the street: "He's not well at all—but that's a usual experience
after the sort of crash he had. They seem to improve, and then they get worse
again. It's partly because they expect to recover too soon and too completely
—and it doesn't happen."

"But it will eventually—in his case?"

"He has a good chance. Physically he's doing fine. He fractured both
ankles, and one of his hands and arms had bad burns—that's the one I'm
working on—the muscle's damaged. And his face, too—that was
burned, but they did a wonderful job with plastic surgery—I've seen a
photograph of him as he used to be and it's really remarkable. Of course the
shock is really the hardest thing to get over."

"But he WILL?"

"I hope so, though he's pretty bad at times. He has sudden nerve- storms
—you can't imagine what they're like until you've seen him... But he
should improve gradually."

"It all sounds serious enough," George said.

"It is—though I've seen many worse. And he has heaps of courage. You
know he got a D.F.C.?"

"No?... When was that?"

She mentioned a time earlier than that of George's visits to the Mulcaster
Hospital.

He said: "He never told me."

"I'm not surprised."

"But isn't he proud of it?"

She smiled. "He's just shy about those things, that's all. Do you know him
well?"

"Not very. But I—I like him a great deal."

"So do I."

They had reached the pavement where she said she would wait for a bus.
George would have liked to go on talking, but the bus came up almost
immediately. "And where are you off to now?" he asked, curious as always
about the lives and work of others.

"Back to the hospital here. They keep me busy."

"I'll bet they do," he answered admiringly. The bus moved away and he
walked back to the College room encouraged by a feeling of community with all
who worked with such quiet, cheerful skill—the real aristocracy on
earth, he reflected, if there ever were such a thing.

Charles had put on his coat and was making sure the curtains were drawn
over the windows. George apologized again for having arrived perhaps
inopportunely.

"Not at all... Sit down. You've had dinner, of course. How about some
coffee? I make it here, on my own."

George agreed and watched Charles as he busied himself with the small but
intricate task. It was as if he wanted to show how he could do things—
as if embarrassment, aware of itself, could find relief in a kind of
exhibitionism. He made excellent coffee, anyhow, and over several cups they
fell to discussing the business that had brought George to London, which
George explained in as much detail as was interesting to himself until it
occurred to him that Charles might not be similarly enthralled. But the boy
urged him to continue. "Go ahead. It's shop talk, but I always enjoy that
from anyone who knows what he's talking about."

George acknowledged the compliment with a pleased 'Aye', and then, to keep
it modest, added: "So long as it's anything to do with Browdley... Now tell
me YOUR gossip."

"Nothing to tell except a lot of dull stories about hospitals."

"They moved you about a lot?"

"Yes. Everybody who thought he could do anything had a go at me. Not that
I'm complaining. They did rather well, I reckon. And the French johnny who
fixed up my nose really improved on the original. I had to spend six weeks in
his private nursing home in Leeds."

"Leeds? As near to Browdley as all that? Why didn't you let me know? I'd
have visited you."

Charles looked embarrassed. "Well, you stopped writing, so I thought you'd
got a bit bored with that sort of thing. I wouldn't blame you."

"I stopped writing?"

And then, of course, the matter was explored; it appeared that George's
last two letters had never reached Charles; it was all as trivial as that.
(They did arrive, eventually, after a series of fantastic re-forwardings).
George exclaimed, laughing because his relief was so much greater than he
could have believed possible: "And I thought it was YOU who didn't
want to write!"

Just then the air-raid siren went off, effectively changing the subject.
"There's a shelter in the next court," Charles said, "if you'd like to go
there."

"What do YOU generally do?"

"It's only happened two or three times before, but I've always stayed
here. I don't think it's a very good shelter anyway."

George said staying where they were was all right with him, so they went
on talking. Now that the contretemps of the letters had been cleared up, the
mood came on them both for subsidiary confessions; Charles, for instance,
admitted that when he had caught sight of George outside the College that
afternoon he had deliberately looked the other way. "It was partly because I
thought perhaps you really didn't want to see me—not now that you know
I know who you are. There's also a bit of a phobia I have about my new face.
It gives me the most conflicting impulses—for instance, in YOUR case,
because you never saw my old face, I didn't mind so much, yet because I also
didn't think you'd recognize me I was glad to think you wouldn't realize I
was avoiding you... Or is all that too complicated?"

"Aye—and so are most human impulses, if you get down to analysing
'em."

"I'm glad you think so. I've had a good deal of time to analyse myself
lately—perhaps too much—and on the whole I prefer flying... I
suppose you know I'll never be able to do that again?"

George had all along thought so, but deemed it best to appear surprised.
Charles went on: "The doctors simply hooted when I mentioned it. Asked me
whether I wasn't satisfied with the way they'd fixed me up for a life of
strictly civilian usefulness."

"And aren't you?"

"I guess I've got to be. I'm damned lucky compared with thousands. The
fact is, though, I really WANTED to fly again... As long as I could be useful
that way I was satisfied. But now that I have to wonder how I CAN be useful,
I'm NOT satisfied."

"What's wrong with just being here?"

"Probably quite a lot. And that's what makes the big difference. There
never was much wrong with the R.A.F., and even if there had been it was none
of my business. My job was to fly."

"And now your job's to get ready for some other job that'll be just as
useful in its way by then."

"I'd like to believe that. I'd like to think the things I'm being lectured
about have the slightest connection with anything that matters. The Statute
of Mortmain, for example—or the Amphictyonic Council."

"The Amphictyonic Council certainly has—because it was a sort of
League of Nations, wasn't it?"

Charles gasped. "Good God! Now how the hell did you know that?"

"Because I once studied history for a university examination same as
you're doing now."

"You DID? You mean you..." The first gunfire could be heard in the far
distance; it seemed to cause a break in the youth's astonishment, giving him
the chance to reflect, perhaps, that it was not very polite to be so
astonished. He stammered: "It's just that I didn't realize you were—
well, what I mean is..."

George let him flounder with a certain grim joy. "Aye, I get what you
mean," he said at length. "You thought education wasn't much in my line, I
daresay. But you're wrong there. I had great ambitions when I was a lad, and
to get a university degree was one of 'em. But it didn't come off—and
perhaps it doesn't matter so much when I look back on it now. I've done other
things."

"That's what my father used to say. His ambition was always to be an
ambassador in one of the important capitals, but things didn't work out that
way. In fact they worked out damned badly... You know he's probably
dead?"

"I wish they did. I wish it was a certainty. I can't bear to think of him
being—"

George caught the note of hysteria and checked it by putting out his cup
for more coffee. "Come now... I know it could be bad, but maybe it's not as
bad as that... Isn't it possible to get word from him? Doesn't anybody have
an idea where he is?"

The whole room began to shake as if a train were rumbling deeply
underground. A flake of plaster fell from the ceiling with almost dainty
nonchalance. Charles answered: "My mother thinks he's in Japan. I don't know
what evidence she has—if any. She's—she's a little strange
—in some ways. She's been writing to all kinds of people in the
Government—making rather extraordinary suggestions for rescuing him.
Quite extraordinary. I'm terribly sorry for her." His voice trembled.

The underground train noise began again. George took his refilled cup of
coffee. "Thanks," he said. And then: "I'm sorry too, lad."

Charles lit a cigarette. "Air-raid warden in Browdley, aren't you?"

George nodded.

"Ever had a raid?"

"Not so far, thank goodness. But I know what they're like. I was at
Mulcaster in one of the worst."

"I was in a few too."

"So I understand."

"Oh, I don't mean THOSE. I mean as one of the underdogs. A few hours after
my mother landed there was a bad one on the docks there... She wasn't scared.
I was, though." He smiled. "Not that I wouldn't rather be here than in a
shelter. It's a bit of a bother for me to get down steps, and I hate
strangers staring at my funny face."

"It's not funny to me."

"That's because you never saw it before. The really funny thing is that
you should ever have seen it at all... Just coincidence, wasn't it, that you
noticed my name on the list at that hospital?"

"Aye—but when you come to think of it, there's a lot of coincidence
in the world."

George nodded. After a pause he asked: "By the way... did you... did you
tell her you'd met me?"

"Yes."

"Did she mind?"

"She seemed a bit surprised, that's all." An explosion came, nearer than
any before. Charles began to laugh.

George said: "Steady, lad."

"Oh, I'm all right. I was just laughing at something she said about you
when I happened to mention you were Mayor of Browdley. She said you were like
a lion when you talked at public meetings, and behind that you were rather
like a friendly old dog that nobody need be afraid of, but behind everything
else you had the secret strength of the dove."

"The WHAT?"

Charles repeated the phrase, after which they both laughed together.
"Well, it's the first time I ever heard of it," George said. "And I
still don't know whether she meant that doves are strong or that I'm weak...
Maybe she didn't know herself when she said it."

"Maybe. My father once said she said things not because they meant
anything but to find out if they DID mean anything."

George made no comment.

"And sometimes her mind seems full of words waiting for other words to set
them off like fire-crackers." The distant underground rumbling died away and
all was silence. "Sounds as if it might be over... Where d'you think it was?
Just tip and run on some little place—they do that, don't they?" With
difficulty the boy got up and walked to the window. "George—do you mind
if I call you George?—George, I WISH I could be of some use —some
REAL use—in this blasted country... If only I could fly again—but
that's out, and so far I can't seem to settle to what's in. I guess millions
of us are going to feel like that after the war." He moved restlessly. "How
about a stroll? I can, if I'm careful."

"Not till the all-clear sounds. Take it easy."

"All right, all right. I'll bet you make a good warden. When are you going
back to that town of yours?"

"Tomorrow night, I hope."

"So soon?"

"I'll have finished my work in London and I've got plenty waiting for me
at home."

"They can't do without you?"

"They could, but they mightn't want to."

"I'll bet you're a good mayor too. I'll bet everything in that town runs
like clockwork."

"Oh, not so bad. I'd match it against any other place in England for being
efficiently managed, if that's what you mean." George smiled to himself as he
thought of the matter, then saw the other's quizzical, slightly sardonic
glance, and wondered if he were being baited. "Look here," he continued, in
some embarrassment, "I'm showing off too much... Aye, and I'd have been down
that shelter too, but for showing off. Maybe that's what kept us both here
like a couple of fools."

Charles shook his head, so George added: "Or maybe not in your case."

"No, George. Oh God, no. If you MUST have a reason, it's simply that I
don't give a damn what happens. To me personally, that is. I'm scared, and
yet I don't care. When you've seen a lot of your friends killed you can't
think you've survived by any special virtue of your own. Then why the hell
HAVE you survived? And the next step in argument is why the hell should you
go on surviving?"

George said quietly: "I don't like to hear you talk like that."

"It's better than having you think it was bravery—or even bravado...
Well, let's discuss something pleasanter. That town of yours, if you
like."

"Provided it doesn't bore you."

"Not at all. I wouldn't even mind seeing the place sometime."

"Why don't you then—sometime?"

It was half an hour before the all-clear sounded, and George was just in
time to catch his train.

* * * * *

Of course they began to correspond again, and within a
short time it
happened that George was called to London for another official conference.
This time it did not spread over a week-end, and he was far too conscientious
to pretend it did; but by routing his return journey, with much extra
discomfort, through Cambridge, he was able to spend a whole afternoon with
Charles. He was delighted to note an improvement in the boy's physical
condition; he could use his legs more easily, and since he had been
recommended to do so for exercise, the two spent part of the time strolling
slowly about the Backs, which at that time of the year were at their
loveliest.

Less reassuring to George was Charles's state of mind, which still seemed
listless and rather cynical, especially at the outset. He still questioned
the value of anything he was doing at Cambridge, and George was too tactful
to reply that even if it had no value at all, it was as good a way of passing
a difficult time as any other. "But you like it here, don't you?" George
asked. "Or would you rather be at home?"

"I haven't a home," Charles answered, so sharply that George did not probe
the point. But then the boy smiled. "I'm sorry—you must think I'm very
hard to please. Of course Cambridge is all right, and I've really nothing to
complain of. Everybody's perfectly charming to me. The dons don't mind
whether I work or not—the whole atmosphere is timeless. It's a bit
frightening at first. And that air of detachment people have here. One of the
St. Jude's dons—a little wizened fellow who's the greatest living
authority on something or other—began talking to me quite casually the
other day about the Channing case—took it for granted that I didn't
mind everyone knowing that my grandfather served a long sentence in jail. And
of course I don't mind—why should I? After all, my father didn't
exactly distinguish himself either—ever heard of Kemalpan? Well, I
won't go into that... and damn it all, I don't care—why SHOULD I
care?"

George looked straight into the boy's eyes. "You were talking about one of
the dons here."

"Oh yes—the one who reminded me that my grandfather was a crook. But
he must have studied the trial pretty closely from the way he talked. He said
John Channing was quite a pioneer in his way, and that his scheme for
reorganizing the cotton industry was very similar to the one sponsored by the
Bank of England twenty years later. 'Unfortunate that your grandfather was
tempted to borrow money by printing too many stock certificates. He should
have become Governor of the Bank, then he could have printed the money.'"
Charles imitated the high-pitched voice of the don. "So utterly detached
—it made things rather easy between us afterwards. And then there's
another fellow—a very famous scientist—who remarked pleasantly to
a small crowd of us at a tea-party—'The Germans really do have the most
God-awful luck—you almost feel sorry for them' —but nobody turned
a hair or thought anything of it, because everyone knows he's working day and
night on some poison-gas to kill the whole German nation if they start that
game themselves."

George answered: "You put your finger on a point, though, when you said 'a
very famous scientist'. Anyone not so famous could get into trouble if he
talked like that at the Marble Arch to a crowd."

"Oh, I don't know. He might be booted out of the Park by a few bus-
drivers. Probably nothing more... Because the English, after all, are a race
of eccentrics. They don't think it's odd that people should be odd. And they
always bear in mind the possibility that the lunatic view might, after all,
be right. That's what makes them tolerant of their enemies."

George nodded. "Which is rather wise, because often it's only from amongst
your enemies that you can pick your friends."

"Has that been your experience, George?"

"Aye—as a minority member on a Town Council where I've had more of
my own way, I reckon, than most of the chaps on the other side with all their
voting majority. But it's taken time—and patience."

"But what happens to the battle, George, if you win over all your enemies
to help you fight it?"

"And everybody can't get it. But you can make a lot of folks THINK they've
got it. Remember Philip Snowden back in 1929—no, you'd be too young
—anyhow, we all cheered like mad because he made France pay an extra
million pounds of war debt! Think of it—one whole extra million pounds!
The Fighting Yorkshireman! Wouldn't have been easy to forecast how we'd all
feel about the Fighting Frenchman a bit later!"

"Does it prove we shouldn't have cheered?"

"Maybe not. Perhaps it proves that though it's hard to get the victory you
want, it's even harder to want the victory you got ten years back."

"Which is the devil of a way to look at things in the middle of a
war."

"Aye, I can see it might be."

Charles walked on for a little way, then said thoughtfully: "You know,
George, you have a rather Machiavellian mind."

George laughed. "Twisty, you mean, eh? That's what my opponents say. But
I'll give you one good tip in politics—Keep straight from year to year,
and you can twist as much as you find convenient from day to day. And as for
the really big fellows—the great men of the world—if THEY keep
straight from century to century, they can do THEIR twisting on a yearly
basis. Does that make any sense?"

Charles laughed. "What DOESN'T make sense to me is that you didn't try for
Parliament. Or did you—ever?"

"Aye, a few times."

"And no luck? How was that?"

George answered after a pause: "Hard to say. Perhaps just what you said
—no luck."

But the recollection was now without a pang, or at any rate the pang was
smothered in much greater pleasure; for George had made a discovery—
that he could talk to Charles as he had never been able to talk to anyone
—even Wendover, with whom there had always been the prickly territory
of dogma. But the boy, less schooled in dialectic than the priest,
nevertheless had a clear, intricate mind—almost too intricate, almost
ice-clear; and George argued with him joyfully every foot of the way from St.
Jude's to Queens' and then back again, on that lovely May afternoon. All the
time a curious happiness was growing in him—something he did not
diagnose at first, but when he did, it came in the guise of a guess—
that this must be what it felt like to have a grown-up son. During the last
half-mile they increased pace, because Charles was in a hurry to get to his
rooms.

George didn't think it could matter much if she did wait for a few
minutes, but he said merely: "And a very nice girl, too."

"You thought so?"

"Aye." George smiled and added: "We had quite a conversation on the way to
her bus. She told me one thing you didn't let out."

To George's immense astonishment Charles flushed deeply and began to
stammer: "You mean—about—our—engagement?"

George swallowed hard. "Well, no—as a matter of fact, it was your
Distinguished Flying Cross."

"Oh, THAT..."

George could see that Charles regretted having given himself away. He held
the youth's arm as they began to climb the staircase. He said: "I'm sorry if
they were both things you didn't want me to know, but now I DO know I'd like
to offer my congratulations... and double ones."

"Thanks... Of course there's no secret about a D.F.C... The other thing IS
more or less—has to be—because—well, it depends on what
sort of a recovery I make. I wouldn't have her tie herself to an old crock.
Or even a young one."

He had left his room unlocked, and the girl was already there when they
entered it. She greeted them both and immediately set about preparing the
equipment for massage treatment.

Charles said abruptly: "He knows all about us, Julie."

She looked up, startled—to Charles, then to George, then to Charles
again. "Did you tell him?"

"No... it sort of slipped out. But I don't really mind."

Then Charles laughed and George shook hands with the girl and said how
pleased he was. "I was praising you to him even before I knew," he said. It
was a happy moment. "And now I'd better leave if I'm going to catch my
train... I'll see you both again before long, I'm sure."

He shook hands again, but the girl followed him to the door. "My turn to
see you to the bus this time."

"All right."

Crossing the court towards the College entrance she said: "I'm glad you
know. Charles thinks such a lot of you."

"He DOES?"

Something in his voice made her laugh and ask: "Why, are you
surprised?"

And George, who was so used to being liked yet could never somehow get
over the surprise of having it happen to him again, replied truthfully: "In a
way, I am, because it's hard for a lad of his age to get along with an old
chap like me. Yet we do get along."

"I know. And you're not old."

"Older, then."

"You can be a great help to him anyhow."

"You too, lass. And far more than I can."

"Well... he needs all the help we can both give him."

"He's getting better, though?"

"Oh yes—physically. It's in other ways we can help him most."

"I understand. There's something he hasn't got—yet. It's a sort of
reason to be alive. He doesn't know why he wasn't killed like so many others
—he's said that to me more than once. Does he talk like that to
you?"

"Sometimes," she answered.

They walked a little way in silence; then, as they reached the kerb, she
said: "Mr Boswell, I'm going to be very frank and ask you something— as
a friend of his..."

"Yes?"

"Will you... would you help him... EVEN AGAINST HIS MOTHER?"

A bus to the station came along. "The next one will do," George muttered.
And then, as they stepped back from the commotion of passengers getting on
and off, he went on muttering: "Help him—against his mother— eh?
Why, what's wrong about his mother?"

She answered: "I only saw her once, when she came to visit him, and of
course to her I was only a nurse. And I WAS only a nurse—THEN. But I
could see that she wasn't good for Charles. She got on his nerves. She wants
to POSSESS him—her whole attitude was like that—and I don't think
she's the right person, and even if she were, I don't think he's the sort of
person who OUGHT to be possessed—by anyone. He should be free." She
continued after a pause: "Maybe you're wondering about my motives in all
this. Well, so far as I'm concerned he IS free. I love him, that's true, but
I only agreed to the engagement because I thought it would help him
—which it did, and still does. But when he's better he may feel
differently. I shan't try to hold him. He's too young, anyhow, to decide
about a wife... I want him to be FREE. I don't want him to be possessed."

"And you think... his mother...?"

"That's what SHE wants. I know it. I think he knows it too, but he can't
easily resist, for the time being—that is, till he's recovered. She's
so strong."

"Strong?"

"Yes, but there are two kinds of strong people. There's the kind that make
you feel strong yourself, and there's the other kind that make you feel
weak... She's that kind. And he's so sorry for her—naturally, on
account of what's happened. Everybody is—she's a tragic figure... Which
makes another reason. He's had enough tragedy."

George could sense the girl's emotion from the way she suddenly stopped at
the word 'tragedy' and laughed, as if that were the only thing left to do.
She said, after the laugh: "Well, I've told you now. I don't know what you
can do, but you're a friend of Charles's and I took advantage of it. Don't do
anything at all if you'd rather not. I really haven't any right to ask."

Another bus was approaching along King's Parade. George answered: "Nay,
Julie, we've all a right to ask anything when it's a matter of helping
somebody."

She smiled. "That's a nice way to look at it... You'd better catch this
bus or you'll be late."

He nodded. And then at the last minute: "I wonder... do you know who I
am?"

She replied, in a rather puzzled voice: "Why, yes—you're the Mayor
of Browdley, isn't that it?"

"Aye," he answered, with a slow smile. "And I'll bet you'd never heard of
Browdley till Charles told you. That's how important it makes me." He gripped
her arm. "See you again soon, lass." And then from the bus platform: "I'll do
what I can. I dunno how, but I will."

Inside the bus and all the way to Browdley, by various slow-train
connections that took all evening and half the night, George still did not
know how he would keep his promise, though his determination to do so surged
into the familiar dimensions of a crusade.

* * * * *

George might have a Machiavellian mind, as Charles had
said, or he might
have made a Jesuit, as Wendover had once said; but there were times when he
knew that nothing is more effective than the direct approach. So after
pondering long on the problem of how to help Charles, he decided that the
first step must be to meet Livia himself and judge what help was needed; and
to meet Livia the simplest method seemed to write and ask for a meeting.

She returned a characteristic brief note that he could visit her any time
he wanted while she was at Castle Winslow.

It was a week before George could arrange to be away from Browdley long
enough to make the trip, and once again there was the complicated
uncomfortable journey by a series of trains. He was not surprised when no one
met him at Castle Winslow station, and as it was fine weather and there were
no cabs he walked the three miles from the station to the lodge gates,
wearing down by sheer physical fatigue a mounting excitement over the fact
that at last, after over twenty years, he was about to see Livia again. It
was curious how something had lingered to produce that excitement still. He
remembered the months immediately after he had known definitely that she
would not return to him—how she had been on his mind night and day, so
that he had scarcely been able to work; he remembered how he would wonder
whether to avoid the Stoneclough road with all its memories, or to exorcise
them deliberately by the self-torture of walking there; and how for weeks he
would try the one method and then, in despair, the other. But for years now
there had been nothing particular to remember or to try to forget.

At the lodge an old man hoeing potatoes in a patch of garden pointed
further along the road when George spoke the name MRS. Winslow. "She's at the
Dower House—that's about a mile. Turn left at the signpost and then
it's the first place on the right behind the trees. There's a lot of kids
there—you can't miss it."

George walked on, puzzled at the reference to 'a lot of kids', and more so
when he came near enough to hear their shrill cries and screams. At length he
glimpsed a rather large rambling house, well set back from the road behind
tall poplars. In the space between the road and the building children of all
ages from three or four to ten or eleven were romping as in a school
playground.

George walked in and the children took no notice of him, but a buxom
middle-aged woman who looked like a farmer's wife changed her direction
across the yard as he approached. He gave his name and repeated who it was he
wanted to see.

"I don't know whether she will," answered the woman doubtfully. "She won't
see anybody as a rule. You're not from a newspaper, are you?"

George assured her he wasn't.

He waited till a moment later the woman beckoned him from a doorway. As
she led him through the cool interior she explained the presence of the
children. They had been bombed out of their homes in some of the big
industrial cities, and this was one of the rehabilitation centres set up by
the Government for the recovery of special cases—'like shell-shock',
some of them, she said. George knew all about it, for there was a similar
centre not far from Browdley, which he had visited. "And does Mrs. Winslow
help in looking after them?" he asked, eager for some clue to what he might
expect.

"Yes, she helps. She's all right with the children."

Presently the woman opened a door leading to a kind of verandah in which a
few children were lying asleep or strangely awake in open cots. That
strangeness was another thing George had seen before—the tense stare,
the twitching muscles; these were the worst cases. And beyond them, arranging
pots of geraniums along a ledge, was Livia. She wore a large, shabby straw
hat and a bright-coloured dress.

At the instant of recognition he gasped with the sensation of something
suddenly switched off inside him, but it was not pain any more; and as always
when he had seen her afresh after an absence, recognition dissolved into a
curious feeling of never having seen her before, but of experiencing some
primitive thrill that time had neither enhanced nor made stale; but it was no
longer a thrill entirely of pleasure.

"Livia..." he said.

She looked up. "Hello, George." She gave him an odd sort of smile. She had
not changed much in appearance—at least, not as much as he had
expected. She went on: "I didn't think you'd be coming today when you didn't
get here earlier."

"I walked from the station."

"Oh, didn't Howard send the car? I asked him to."

"Howard?"

"My brother-in-law. He probably didn't do it deliberately. I mean he did
do it deliberately. I mean, he deliberately didn't send the car. Just because
I asked him. He doesn't like me. None of them do—except these." As her
eyes ranged over the cots something came into her face that made George
reflect how beautiful she still was, provided one had ever thought her
beautiful at all.

"Well, it didn't matter. I enjoyed the walk."

"Come into the garden."

He followed her. She had been taking cuttings from geraniums, planting
them in pots for the verandah, and without a word of apology or excuse she
now resumed the task, and with such concentration that George did not feel
she was giving him more than a part of her attention. At any rate, there was
to be no such dramatic or over-dramatic encounter as he had half expected,
and for this at least he was thankful.

"Oh, I'm all right. Poor Jeff, though. He's in Japan, only nobody knows
where. If only the Government would send me out I'd find him—surely
it's possible by submarine? They could put me ashore on a dark night—
like Casement in Ireland. Don't they do that sometimes? Do you know anyone at
the Admiralty you could ask? I told Jeff I would... People thought I was
against his work—and so I was—because I could see all this
coming. In Hong Kong, I mean. The place stank of what was coming... And then
he had to go back into it all like a fool. I'd never have left him no matter
where he went, but they took him away. They took him away, George. I wish I
was with him still, even in a prison-camp. Where you are doesn't really
matter. The earth is all the same." She began to pick up a handful of soil
and sprinkle it into a pot. "I always liked planting things. Then you can let
history slip through your fingers—like peasants do. That's why I want
Charlie to give up Cambridge and live on a farm."

"To give up Cambridge?"

"Yes—what's the good of it? We argued about it but he didn't
understand. Nobody ever does. They argue and argue but they don't FEEL. It's
a little farm off the coast of Galway. I'd like him to settle down there and
rest from thinking, arguing, books... all that... dead things that have
caused all the upset..."

George watched her with curious intensity. She went on: "You don't know
what the world is all about, George. You never did. All your meetings and
speeches—must have been thousands of them... what did they do? Or what
did they stop?"

George did not reply. The heedless fever of her voice had not only been
hard to keep pace with as a listener, but it had given him an inward tension
that left him without power or will to reply. Presently she exclaimed: "Well?
Don't say you agree with me—that would be too amazing!"

He still couldn't answer.

"Never mind," she smiled, after another pause. "Tell me about
Browdley."

"Browdley's all right," he managed to say, in hardly more than a
whisper.

"Not been bombed to bits yet?"

"Thank God, no."

"Annie still with you?"

"Aye."

"And Will Spivey?"

"Aye."

"And there's still the little garden I made?"

"It's still there." He added: "And Stoneclough too."

She suddenly began to cry, but without any sound. The tears fell into the
soil as she went on filling up the pot. "Oh, George, what a long time ago! I
hope you've been happy."

"YOU have, haven't you?"

She nodded.

"I'm glad."

"Yes... it was a thing to try for, wasn't it? Love, I mean—not
happiness." She stopped crying as abruptly as she had begun. "Poor Jeff... I
wish I knew someone at the Admiralty—Howard knows them all but he won't
help. He doesn't like me—Howard, I mean—Lord Winslow, that is. He
thinks I ruined Jeff's career. And now he thinks I want to ruin Charlie's.
Ruin... ruin... how can anyone make more than there is? I loved my father and
then I loved my husband and now I love my son... anything wrong in all that?
Or in these children... these have been ruined too, but not by love. I'll
tell you what I do about them—are you interested?"

George murmured assent and she began to chatter with eager animation.
"They're in need of almost everything when they come here—they have to
be clothed, as a rule, as well as fed—I get some of the older ones to
help in cooking and serving their own meals, also repairing their own
clothes—that is, if they can—and of course we grow most of our
own fruits and vegetables, so there's always plenty of work in the garden.
But the worst cases can't do anything at all for a time—they just
scream and cry and there's nothing helps but when I talk to them, and I do
that. I talk nonsense mostly. When bad things are on their minds that's all
they want to hear. Nothing serious. Not even politics." She smiled. "Charlie
told me you were Mayor of Browdley now?"

George said that was so.

"You should have come here wearing your Mayor's chain. To make the
children laugh. Always a good thing to make them laugh."

George smiled back. "Aye, I might have."

"You would, I know. You're very kind. It's just that you don't think of
things, isn't it? Or rather you think of too many other things..."

After that she continued to work on the geraniums for a long interval
—so long that George began to wonder whether she had forgotten he was
there.

But presently, with the air of a duchess at a reception, she turned to him
brimming over with graciousness. "It was so nice of you to come. And you'll
come again, won't you?"

"Do you—do you really WANT me to—Livia?"

"Of course. Any time. That is, before we go to Ireland..."

"You're... going to take Charles... to Ireland?"

"Yes, for the vacation. And if I can I shall persuade him not to go back
next term—he only likes Cambridge because he's got himself entangled
with a girl there."

"WHAT?"

"Of course he doesn't know I know, but it was plain as soon as I saw them
together. Poor boy... rather pathetic to watch him pretending she was just a
hospital nurse that came to give him massage treatment. Of course I don't
blame HIM. In his state he'd be an easy victim."

"You mean... you... you think she's THAT sort of a girl?"

"I don't care what sort she is, I'm going to put a stop to it."

"Why?"

"Because I have other plans for my own son. It's about time we got to know
each other—what with all the separations of school, and then the war...
and the peace isn't going to be much better, for most people. Or are you
optimistic about it? You probably are—you always were about most
things... I won't shake hands—mine are too dirty. But do come again
—before we go... Goodbye..."

"Goodbye, Livia."

"And you will come again?"

"Aye." He walked to the door, then hesitated and said: "My advice would be
to let that boy live his own life."

"And marry the first girl he meets? That WOULD be optimism."

He wasn't sure whether she meant that such a marriage would be optimism,
or whether it would be optimistic of him to suppose that she would ever let
Charles do such a thing; and whichever she meant, he wasn't sure whether she
were serious or merely ironic. Anyhow, he knew there was little use in
continuing the argument, the more so as she had again resumed the potting of
the plants. He said from the door, watching her: "I wish you were as good
with grown-ups as you are with kids, Livia. You're doing a fine job with
these. Their parents'll bless you for it."

"Their parents are dead, George. Dead—DEAD." Her eyes looked up, but
her hands worked on. "Fancy you not knowing that."

George also felt he ought to have known it—though after all, why?
But Livia had always been like that, possessed of some curious power to
impose guilt, or at least embarrassment; and so he stood there in the
doorway, staring at her till he knew there was nothing else to say. Then he
walked off.

The woman who looked like a farmer's wife accosted him as he was leaving
the house. "They telephoned from the Hall, sir," she said, with new respect
in her voice. "His lordship wished to apologize about the car—it had a
puncture on the way to the station. But he's sent another car to take you
back, and he also asked if you'd call and see him on the way."

"Where would I find him?"

"The chauffeur will take you, sir."

* * * * *

The Rolls-Royce swung into the last curve of the mile-long
drive and
pulled up outside the portico of Winslow Hall. It was an imposing structure,
in Palladian style; and George's reflection at any normal time would have
been concerned with its possible use as state or municipal property; but this
was not a normal time, and to be frank, he did not give Winslow Hall a
thought as he entered it. He was thinking of Livia.

Even the library, when he was shown in, did not stir in him more than a
glance of casual admiration, though this was the kind of room he had all his
life dreamed of—immense, monastic, and book- lined.

"Nice of you to drop in, Boswell," began Lord Winslow, getting up from an
armchair.

The two men shook hands. The present Lord Winslow was a revised edition of
the former one, but with all qualities a shade nearer the ordinary—
thus a little plumper, rather less erudite, more of a dilettante, worldlier,
colder beneath the surface.

George declined a drink, but began to take in his surroundings—the
ornately carved mantelpiece, a smell of old leather bindings, the huge
mullioned window through which a view of rolling parkland was superb.

"First time you've been in this part of the country perhaps?" And Winslow
began to chatter about local beauty spots, while the butler brought sherry.
"Good of you to take such an interest in Charles. He sends me glowing
accounts of you."

"It's a pleasure to help the boy."

"That's how we all feel..." And then a rather awkward pause. "Cigar?"

"No, thanks—I don't smoke."

Lord Winslow got up and closed a door that had swung open after the butler
had not properly closed it. Coming back across the room he said: "So you've
seen Livia?"

"Aye, I've just come from seeing her."

"She's a little off her head, as I daresay you must have noticed."

George, despite his own liking for downright statements, was somewhat
shocked by the coolness of the remark.

Winslow went on: "I suppose it's what she went through in Hong Kong."

"It might have been."

"Though to tell you the truth, she was rather—er—
unpredictable, even before that... Of course it's a problem to know quite
what to do. Especially in regard to Charles."

"Aye, that's what matters."

"I'm glad you think so. She's dead set on taking him to live with her in
Ireland, but in my opinion that would be a mistake, even if it were feasible,
which it probably isn't. I doubt if the Government would issue permits."

"Permits?"

"You see, it's Southern Ireland. Neutral country. They wouldn't be quite
sure what she was up to in a place like that... I heard this in confidence
from a chap in the Passport Office. They have everybody tabbed, you
know."

"But I don't see—"

"Oh, nothing significant—nothing at all, I'm quite certain. She
probably mixed with some of the wrong people somewhere—she's really
rather eccentric in her choice of friends. Personally I don't think it ever
meant a thing, though it certainly can't have helped Jeff... any more than it
would help Charles." Suddenly Winslow rang the bell, and when the butler
appeared, turned to George with the remark: "I hope you'll stay to dinner."
George was surprised by this on top of other surprises, and had hardly begun
to stammer his regrets when Winslow interpreted them to the butler as an
acceptance.

"It's kind of you," George said when the man had gone, "but I was thinking
of my train. It leaves at six-fifteen."

"Oh, there's another one after that."

"Are you sure? Because I looked it up and—"

"Positive... I'm so glad you'll stay. I'd like to talk things over with
you... I'm sure we both have the boy's best interests at heart."

So George found himself dining at Winslow Hall—just himself and Lord
Winslow in the enormous panelled room that could have seated fifty with ease.
The sunset slanted through the windows as they began the meal, but later,
when the butler approached to draw the black-out curtains, Winslow left his
seat and beckoned George to share with him a last look at the view. "You see
how it is," he said quietly. "I have no children. All that— and
this—may belong to Charles eventually." They went back to their places
at the table. Winslow went on: "Oh yes, I know what you're going to
say—one can't keep up these great estates any more—all this sort
of thing's done for, outmoded, a feudal anachronism, and so on. That's the
fashionable attitude, I'm aware. But fashionable things are usually wrong
—or half wrong. All kinds of Englishmen are busy nowadays explaining to
other countries how England has changed, is changing, and will change after
the war. No doubt it goes down very well—especially with Americans. But
between you and me England may not change as much as some people expect. And
the kind of people who talk most about change don't seem to have changed much
themselves—at least not to my somewhat jaundiced scrutiny."

"Aye," answered George. "You might be right about that. And there's
certainly one thing about England that won't change—and hasn't
changed."

"What's that?"

"Ninety-five per cent of us are working folks and have been for a thousand
years."

A slight flush came into Winslow's face. He poured himself an extra
brandy. "True, of course—as well as a useful demagogic statistic... It
only remains now for you to assure me that it's the rich what gets the
pleasure, it's the poor what gets the—."

"Nay, I don't say that. There hasn't been much pleasure for your brother
or your nephew these past few years—rich or not. And there isn't going
to be much for them—or for any of us, maybe—in the years ahead...
That's why I'd like you to think twice about what you want Charles to do when
he grows up." And George, now in a proper stride, became talkative for the
first time since his arrival. "I'm very fond of the boy. He's taught me a bit
since I knew him and maybe I've taught him a bit too. Don't saddle him with
all this stuff. When I was a lad the rich had all of what were called
advantages, but there's been a difference lately. It isn't that there's going
to be a bloody revolution to take all this away, but are these things going
to go on being such advantages? That's what folks are beginning to wonder,
and once they start wondering, the bottom's out of the market. Take the Right
School and the Right Accent, for instance. You've got the right ones, I've
got the wrong ones, but suppose some day we all wake up and find the whole
thing doesn't matter?"

"Of course. I'd be all for it. But what if some of your extremist fellows
merely reverse the positions and call your accent right and mine wrong
—what then?"

George gave a faint grin. "Aye, that would be a pity. But I daresay some
of the chaps on your side are pretty good mimics. Our side always produced a
few."

Winslow's flush deepened. "Maybe it will come to that. Lip- service to
Demos could hardly be more literal."

George had to think that one out. Then he answered: "I don't know what you
mean by Demos. I don't care for words like that. I don't like to hear people
called 'the masses' or 'the proletariat' or even 'the average man'. Take my
own town of Browdley. There's not an average man in the place—they're
all individuals—different, separate, with their own personal problems
same as we all have. And we don't know any Demos either. We've never seen the
animal."

Winslow smiled coolly. "I think we're straying rather far from the point
—if there ever was a point... You obviously think there's no future in
inheriting a title, a place like this, a seat in the House of Lords—
and all the responsibilities as well as privileges it entails?"

George answered: "I never like to say what there's a future in. Sounds too
much like a tip on the stock market... It's WHAT'S IN THE FUTURE that matters
more. I can't forecast that, nor can anybody. But I've often thought it's as
if we're all in a train going somewhere. Some people don't like travelling,
and just grumble about having to. And others think that trains go backwards
or that you can push a train by leaning on a door-handle. And quite a lot of
folks seem to think that miracles can happen to a train. But it really
doesn't matter what you think unless it's based on what you can see out of
the window. The train's going to get you somewhere, wherever that is—
and the one place it certainly won't be is the place you started from."

"Sounds very wise, Boswell. But whenever I hear a man enunciating a
philosophy, I always ask him how has he handled his own life by its aid? Has
he been a success or a failure? Has he been right when other men have been
wrong? Has he made many mistakes?... Or is all that too personal?"

"Aye, it's personal, but I don't mind answering it. I've made plenty of
mistakes, and I've often been wrong. And I've been a failure if you measure
by what I once had ambitions about."

Winslow helped himself to more brandy. "Very honest of you to admit it...
and if I might be personal again and suggest a reason—not perhaps the
ONLY reason, but A reason... might it not be the same one as in the case of
my unfortunate brother?"

George was silent and Winslow went on, after waiting for some answer: "To
put it bluntly... LIVIA."

George pushed his chair back from the table. "I think we've discussed her
enough," he said gruffly. "Perhaps I ought to be thinking of my train."

"Yes, of course." Winslow rang the bell again and told the butler: "Mr
Boswell will be catching the nine-forty. Will you telephone the
stationmaster?"

"Very good, your lordship."

"Why do you have to worry the stationmaster about me?" George asked. "I
can find a seat, or if I can't, it doesn't matter."

Winslow smiled. "My dear chap, if I didn't telephone, you wouldn't even
find a train. The nine-forty's fast from Bristol to London unless I have it
stopped for you."

"You mean you can stop an express at that little local station just to
pick up one passenger? And in war-time?"

"Certainly—but it isn't done by favour. It's a legal right, dating
back to the time the railway was built a hundred years ago. My
great-grandfather wouldn't sell land to the company except on that condition
—in perpetuity. Damned thoughtful of him, I must say."

Soon afterwards Lord Winslow shook hands most cordially with George, and
the latter was driven to Castle Winslow station in the Rolls-Royce. The
station was normally closed at that time of night, but the stationmaster had
opened it for the occasion and personally escorted him along the deserted
platform.

"First-class, sir?"

"No, third," George answered grimly.

After that they conversed till the train came in. The stationmaster agreed
that England was changing, but he also thought he never remembered farmers so
prosperous or farmland selling at so high a price.

"Oh, they're all right if they did what Lord Winslow did. He made himself
into a company years ago. He's a smart chap."

"Aye... Knows how to keep up with the old and play around with the new, is
that it?"

But the stationmaster was cautious. "He's smart," he repeated. "Travels
third like yourself, as often as not... Because the firsts are just as
crowded and he don't see why he should pay extra for nothing. You can't blame
him, can you?"

George agreed that you could not.

But on the way to London the stopping of the express became a symbol
—and a very handy one—of the kind of thing he found himself
rather passionately against. And it was equally handy as a symbol of the kind
of thing he felt Charles would be unlucky to inherit.

* * * * *

The University term was nearly over, and soon Charles would
have to decide
where to go for the vacation. His mother, he told George, wanted him to spend
it with her in Ireland (she had been pulling wires, as only she knew how, to
get the necessary permits); but Uncle Howard had asked him to Winslow Hall;
and Julie, of course, though she would never suggest it, naturally hoped he
would stay in Cambridge, like many other undergraduates in war-time. As for
Charles himself, he didn't exactly know what he wanted to do. He was so
damned sorry for his mother and anxious to give her a good time—
especially after the nice letter she had written him about George's visit. So
had Uncle Howard. In fact Charles showed George the two letters, and George,
reading between the lines, deduced in both writers a desire to enlist him as
an ally against the other. He did not, however, worry the boy with this
interpretation, but kept it filed, as it were, in that department of his mind
where the shrewder things took place.

Of course what Charles would really like best, he admitted, was to stay
where he could see Julie, at least for part of the vacation. The only
objection was that this, he felt sure, would either bring his mother to
Cambridge forthwith (in which case he couldn't see Julie at all), or else she
would guess there was some girl in the case, and make a scene about it.

"What makes you think she'd do that?" George asked.

"Oh, just a few odd hints in letters and so on. And once in an air- raid
shelter just after she landed. Some girl was a bit scared, and as I was too,
we talked together till the raid was over. Mother of course couldn't
understand it."

"That you talked—or that you were scared?"

"Both... Anyhow, I can't stand scenes, and I know if she were to learn
about Julie she'd make another one."

"But you can't keep it a secret indefinitely."

"I'll let her know, when I know for certain I'm going to get all
right. Because, as I told you, I wouldn't marry at all otherwise."

"You'll get all right."

"That's what everybody says, but of course saying so is part of the
treatment. You can't really believe them—least of all doctors— in
a matter like that."

"Well, what do YOU think? Don't YOU believe you're going to get all
right?"

"Sometimes I do, sometimes not. So many things change my mind about it.
Trivial—ridiculous things... Sometimes I stop in front of a lamp-post
as if the future of the world depended on which side I walk round. Of course
you may say it DOES depend on that. I mean, if you believe in predestination,
every little thing must be charted out in advance, so that if it were
possible for even a caterpillar to walk just once on the wrong side of a
lamppost, then the whole cosmic blueprint goes to pot. On the other hand, you
can say that my hesitation in front of the lamp- post was itself predestined,
so that—"

"That's enough," George interrupted. "You're much too clever for me. And
if that's what you get from studying philosophy at a university—"

"No, George. That's what I got from piloting a bomber over Germany. You
have to think of SOMETHING then. Something fearful and logical, like
predestination, or else mystic and mathematical, like the square root of
minus one." The boy's eyes were streaked now with flashes of wildness.
"Anyway, how did we get on to all this?"

"I was saying you're going to get better—and meaning it too. That
is, if you tackle the future the right way."

"I know. And avoid scenes. Scenes don't help. And when I feel better
enough to tell my mother about Julie there'll be a scene. And then I'll feel
worse again... Sort of a vicious circle, isn't it?"

George nodded. "All the same, though, I wouldn't wait too long."

"You mean, before I tell her?"

"Nay, don't bother your head about that. I mean, before you marry the
girl."

A strained smile came over Charles's face. "Where's the hurry?" he asked,
with sudden excitement. "What makes you give me that advice?"

George answered: "Because it seems to me there's another vicious circle
knocking around. You say you won't marry till you know for certain you're
going to get all right, but perhaps marriage is one of the things that would
help to MAKE you certain."

Charles laughed. "I see! Doctor Boswell's advice to those about to get
married—DO! Advice based on his own experience of long, happy, and
fruitful wedlock!" After a wilder outburst of hilarity, the laughter drained
suddenly from the boy's face and a scared look took its place. He clutched
frantically at George's arm. "Oh God, I'm sorry—I didn't mean that... I
never thought... I forgot for the moment... George... Oh, George, PLEASE
forgive me..." His voice and body began to shake convulsively.

It was the first time George had seen the kind of thing Julie had told him
about, and it shocked him immeasurably. He put his arms round the boy and
fought the enemy with a silent, secret strength of his own. There was not
much to say. He kept saying: "Steady, lad... it's all right... all
right..."

"George, I didn't mean... I swear I didn't mean anything
personal—"

"Aye, I know you didn't. And what if you did, for that matter? To blazes
with everything except you getting well again... Quiet down a bit more, lad,
and then let's take a walk..."

All this took place during another of George's visits to Cambridge. He had
been in London on business, as before—one of those fairly frequent
conferences that had often been a nuisance in the past, but which now he
looked forward to with an excitement entirely unshared by his colleagues.
Nobody had at times been more severe than he in castigating the week-end
hiatus in official circles, but now on a Saturday morning in some Whitehall
Government office he found himself almost gleeful over slow-moving procedure,
actually hoping in his heart for an adjournment till Monday.

This had happened, once more, so he was enjoying the intervening day with
a clear conscience. And another item of good fortune was that Charles could
now walk short distances, with only one stick, and relish the exercise.
Perhaps it was this that made him seem more boyish, even school-boyish on
occasions; and for the first time George ceased to be startled when he
reflected that Charles was only in his twenty-third year.

But other startling ideas filled the gap, and one of them was unique
because it came to George in—of all places—a public-house.

Charles had mentioned this pub as being a rather pleasant place within
easy walking distance in the country, and after an evening meal George let
him lead the way there. The scene a few hours earlier seemed to have drawn
them closer together, though in a way that neither could have expressed or
would have wished to talk about; but George, at least, was aware of it and
satisfied. It gave an edge to his enjoyment of the full moon over the fields,
and the scents of crops and flowers that lay heavy on the warm air. Familiar
as he was with the grimmer landscape of the north, he thought he had never
known anything so richly serene as those rural outskirts of the university
town—a quality enhanced, somehow, by the counterpoint of events
overhead. For while they walked the hum and throbbing never ceased, sometimes
increasing to a roar as planes in formation flew directly above. The R.A.F.
was evidently out in force, heading for the Continent, and George guessed and
was a little apprehensive of Charles's mood as he heard and was perhaps
reminded.

For that reason George tried to keep the conversation on trivialities.
During the walk they overtook several other pedestrians, which George
commented must make a red-letter event in Charles's post-hospital experience,
even though the slower movers were only old bent men plodding along at a mile
an hour. Charles drily rejoined that there was a good deal of rheumatism
locally, which was a peculiar thing in an otherwise healthy district.

"Maybe not so peculiar," George countered, getting on to one of his
favourite topics. "Give people decent houses, in town or country, and don't
think that roses round the door make up for bad drains and damp walls."

Charles laughed. "Not bad, George. You might win a parliamentary election
yet. Castle Winslow would give you a chance, anyway. It's a family
constituency—with the Winslow influence you'd probably romp home.
Unfortunately the old boy who represents it now may hang on for another
twenty years."

George laughed also, and in the same mood. "Pity. But in the meantime
there might be a chance for YOU—in Browdley. Then I could demonstrate a
bit of MY influence."

They both went on with the joke till the passage of planes in even greater
numbers changed the subject back to an earlier one. "I once tried to write a
poem," Charles said, "about the contrast between those old chaps and the boys
upstairs. I thought of it actually while I was flying back from Germany after
a raid. You have to think of something then, when your nerves are all on
edge. I can't remember more than one of the verses—I think it went

'Each with a goal his own—Beginner's or Ender's luck—Four
hundred miles to Cologne, Two to the Dog and Duck...'

It's less than two from where we are now, but some of those veterans
wouldn't miss their nightly pint if it were twice that... By the way, though,
you don't drink?"

"No, but I'll swill lemonade while you have all the beer you want."

"All I can get, you mean. Don't be so bloody optimistic."

Presently they reached the pub and pushed into the already crowded bar,
where Charles received a few cordial but quiet greetings from people whom he
had presumably met there before. A few air-crews from the near-by station
were taking their drinks, and others were having a dart game, but perhaps
half the crowd were civilians, mostly old farm labourers with tanned and
wrinkled faces. The changing world met here with the less changing earth,
tilled throughout the ages by men who had worked heedless amidst clashes of
knights in armour, and were now just as heedless up to the very edge of
runways and bomb craters. HEEDLESS? But the word failed to express the rueful
sagacity, the merry ignorance, that flourished nightly in the bar parlour of
the Dog and Duck. Like all genuine English country pubs, it was always a
cheerful but rarely a boisterous and never a Bacchanalian place—it was
a microcosm of that England in which so many things are not done, including
the act of wondering too truculently why they are not. George, even with his
small personal knowledge of pubs, recognized at once the same spirit that
usually obtained at Council meetings and Whitehall conferences, and thus he
felt immediately at home. And in that heart-warming mood, while he leaned
over his glass of lemonade and Charles over his tankard, George's startling
idea came to him for the second time, but really startlingly now because, in
a fantastic way, he half meant it. "Why DON'T you stand for Browdley at the
next election?"

Charles looked puzzled. "You mean—for Parliament?"

"Aye. It's an idea."

"No, it's a joke, George, and not a very good one."

"Of course there won't be an election till after the war—so far as
one can foresee. But there might be worse things that a chap like you could
do when the time comes."

Charles smiled and drank deep. "And better things, I hope."

"Listen... When I visited you in that hospital at Mulcaster you said
something I hope you remember. You said you blamed my generation for not
making a proper peace after the last war. And I asked you then if you weren't
afraid that the kids now in their prams might grow up to blame YOUR
generation for the same thing... Well, lad, they will—unless you do
something about it."

"Maybe—but not in politics."

"How else?"

"I don't know, George—don't ask me. I can't fly any more, or I might
drop a few bombs somewhere. But I do know I couldn't face the political
racket. Nobody would ever vote for me, anyway—I'm not the type that
goes around kissing babies and promising everything to everybody. I'd say the
wrong thing, and probably think it too—because, to be frank, I've never
seen an election without feeling that the whole machinery of it is a bit
ridiculous—"

"And it is. But it's the machinery we've got, and we'd better use it while
we've got it."

"Oh, certainly—but leave it to the right man. YOU'RE probably the
right man for Browdley—you were born there, and you know the people. I
wouldn't understand them—factory workers and miners—not because
I'm a snob, but because I've never lived in that sort of a place."

"They'd understand you, that's the main thing. They'd understand you
because they're doing a job same as you've done a job, and some of them are
risking lives and health at it same as you've risked yours. You wouldn't be
talking to them except as equals. Besides, it might be years off yet—
there's plenty of time."

"You really are a most persistent fellow, George. Anyone would think it
was something I'd agreed to."

George laughed. "Aye, we'll not worry about it. Twenty-two's full young."
And then he laughed again as he added: "Though William Pitt was Prime
Minister at twenty-four. You won't beat THAT."

But a dark look came into Charles's face. "There's one final reason,
George, even if there weren't any other. You've heard me spout my opinions,
and you're taking it for granted I'd think it worth while to convert others
to them. But I'm not sure that I would, even if I could. Don't think me
cynical—it's merely that I'm not sentimental. As I've found the world,
so far, it's a pretty lousy place, especially when you get a glimpse of what
goes on behind the scenes. Most people don't—and perhaps they're better
off. That's why I wouldn't make a good vote-catcher. He has to be such a
bloody optimist—like you. Even if he warns of doom he has to promise
that if only you'll elect him he'll prevent it. Frankly, I don't kid myself
to that extent and I don't think I'd find it easy to kid Tom, Dick, and
Harry."

"Aye, things are bad enough, I'll admit that." George drank the rest of
his lemonade in slow gulps. "But as for what goes on behind the scenes,
that's just what gives me hope. Go behind the scenes of everyday life and see
the courage and decency most folks have—see the raw material we've got
to work on, if only those who have the brains for the job can keep faith in
it."

"I know what you're driving at, George. Just a simple little job of
rebuilding the world."

"Ah, now, that IS cynical. Of course it's not simple—was it simple
to invent a plane? It's appallingly difficult and complicated—and
that's where chaps like you come in. It'll need all your brains and
education, but it'll also need something I'VE got—and that's a bit of
faith in Tom, Dick, and Harry." George then added softly, administering the
gentle shock with which he had wheedled so much of his own way in his time:
"Since you once said you'd like to, why don't you come to Browdley when term
ends and have a look at the place?"

"You mean—VISIT Browdley?"

"Aye, why not? Or were you only joking when you said you'd like to?"

"No, I wasn't joking—matter of fact I wouldn't MIND coming, only
—" He hesitated and then added: "I hate disappointing so many other
people."

"But you can't please 'em all, no matter what you do. Why not please
yourself for a change? And of course you needn't stay longer than you
want..."

* * * * *

George felt very happy as he sat in the London train that
night. Thinking
back upon the long conversation at the Dog and Duck he could not exactly
remember when the idea of taking Charles to Browdley had first occurred to
him, but he knew that as soon as it had, there had come to him the feeling of
instant lightness. It was like trying a new key in a strange lock and
knowing, even before the turn, that somehow it would work. And it all
happened, as so many things happened in George's life, because he got talking
and couldn't stop. He hadn't, of course, been really serious about Charles
embarking on a political career. It was much too soon to be serious about ANY
kind of career for a youth who was still so far from mental and physical
health. But that led straight to the point; for part of the cure lay in BEING
serious about something. And suddenly George saw beyond the merely personal
relationship between them; he saw the boy's problem as that of every boy
returned from battle with body, mind, and spirit scarred by experience; and
he knew that the problem must be tackled better than the last time, when
millions who had faced the realities of war were too embittered, or too
apathetic or (like George himself) too easy-optimistic, to face those of
peace. But Charles was not optimistic enough; and that, for George, made the
task of rehabilitation even more congenial. So if he could interest him in
Browdley, why not? And if, in due course, interest should deepen into
faith... faith in the things George had faith in...

George's heart was already warm to the prospect, but his head cautioned
him against that same over-optimism while optimism gave him answer that the
boy himself would check that. He's got a better mind than I have, George
reflected humbly; HE'LL be good for ME, too; he'll not stand any of my
nonsense... And then optimism soared ridiculously as George day-dreamed them
both as co- workers for Browdley—Mayor and Member—what a team!
His eyes filled as he thought of it... highly unlikely, of course, but not
quite impossible... and what more need a dream be?

Before taking the train he had mentioned to Julie his plan to have Charles
at Browdley. He had had only a few moments with the girl because she was
going on night duty; they had met by appointment in the market square where
she had to change buses. She had told him then, since her arriving bus
brought up the subject, that she lived in a suburb of the town and that her
father was a schoolmaster there. George rode with her on another bus to the
big hospital not far from the railway station, and perhaps because they found
a seat on the top deck he was reminded of other bus rides, so many of them,
years before, with Livia. And the reminder, of course, emphasized the
difference of everything else, for no one in the world, he was sure, could be
less like Livia than Julie was...

She was delighted with his idea. "Oh, I'm so glad, Mr. Boswell. It'll be a
real holiday for him."

"Not much of a holiday resort, Browdley, but I'll do my best to give him a
good time."

"He'll be with you, that's the main thing, because I've noticed how good
for him you are."

"You'll be better, though, one of these days."

"I hope so." And then she added: "By the way, I know who you are now. He
told me."

"He did. That's fine. Now we none of us have any secrets from one
another."

And suddenly again the same impulse he had had with Charles made him add:
"Why don't you marry him soon?"

She seemed startled by a word rather than by the question. "Soon?... You
mean—before he—before he gets better?"

"Aye, why not? Don't you want to?"

"I'd love to, but... in a way it would be taking an advantage. So many men
in hospitals fall in love with their nurses—THINK they've fallen in
love, anyhow. It often makes part of the cure, so the nurses don't mind. But
a sensible nurse doesn't take it too seriously, even if she falls in love
herself. That's why I don't consider our engagement as binding—not on
Charles, anyway. When he gets better he may prefer someone else."

"And if he prefers someone else he may not get better. If I were you I'd
take THAT seriously."

"You mean..."

"Aye, but think it over first. You're pretty right and reasonable about
most things, I'd say."

That was all they had time for, but he was left with a comfortable
reassurance that to be right and reasonable was not always to be prim and
cold; and this, for him personally, was like a pat on the back from the
Almighty.

So he enjoyed his thoughts during the journey back to Browdley.

A couple of weeks later, as he left a Council meeting, the Town Hall
porter handed him a wire that read: "Have just taken your advice. Honeymoon
at Scarborough. Then may we both accept your invitation to the Mayor's Nest?
Julie and Charles."

George stood for a few seconds in the Town Hall lobby, holding the wire
under the dim lamp; then his face broke suddenly into a wide slow smile that
made Tom Roberts grin back with cheerful impudence. "Backed a winner, Mr.
Mayor?" he quipped—the joke of that being the Mayor's well-known
antipathy to betting of all kinds.

"Nay, Tom... TWO winners!" George answered, surprisingly, as he strode
down the Town Hall steps into Shawgate.

* * * * *

On his way to Browdley station to meet them, he could not
help reflecting
what an extraordinary thing it really was that he should be welcoming Livia's
son to his home.

He had spent the evening with Wendover, being far too excited to settle to
any solitary work; and towards midnight, for a change and because of the
bright moon, he chose the slightly longer route through the waste land on the
fringe of the town, where factories met fields and—less
metaphorically—lovers met each other. And he thought of that evening,
so many years before, yet so well remembered, when he had passed that way in
the other direction, having taken old Lord Winslow to his train after the
unforgettable interview. And now it was that man's grandson and a young wife
whom he was meeting—as happily as if he himself were young again and
happy about most things.

In fact he was momentarily so excited that when the train drew in and they
had all exchanged the first greetings, he was glad that a heavy suitcase
provided something immediate and practical to attend to—there being
neither cabs nor luggage delivery till next morning. Meanwhile Charles was
smiling and assuring George that he didn't in the least object to a walk on
such a night, if it wasn't too far. "Not far at all," George answered,
chiefly for something to say to the stationmaster as they passed the exit.
"Except when I'm hurrying for the nine-five to Mulcaster—eh, Ted?"

They crossed the cobbled station yard and turned into the huddle of
streets. A few other walkers passed or overtook them, even so late— men
on their way to night-working factories, policemen, air wardens. George
pointed out the stationer's shop in Shawgate that had formerly been his Uncle
Joe's, and which still, after two changes of ownership, displayed the same
mixture of leather-bound ledgers, morocco editions of the standard poets,
Bibles, cookery books, and the works of Miss Florence Barclay. But as a
concession to the day and age, and with that ironic innocence of which the
English are so capable because they are unaware of it, a single modern
edition occupied pride of place in the very centre of the window—Mein
Kampf in an unexpurgated translation. George did not point this out, because
he saw in it nothing remarkable; but he did draw attention to the Mayor's
office in the Town Hall with its rather florid stained-glass windows that an
earlier generation had considered stylish. He kept up a running gossip, also,
about Browdley people whom Charles and Julie would probably meet in due
course. "The Vicar—he'll amuse you. He's writing a book about Roman
numerals—has a theory about them—been busy on it for years
—he's eighty-eight, I think... There's a younger chap of seventy-odd
—Catholic priest—Wendover, by name—my best friend
—you'll like HIM... That's the new municipal swimming-bath— just
finished before the war began. Like a fool I said I'd make the first dive
when it was opened—used to be quite a swimmer when I was a lad
—but I hadn't done any for years and I made a belly- flop that splashed
all the other councillors and their wives... it was the laugh of the place
the day after... Here's the real business centre—the banks,
Woolworth's, Lipton's. And down that street is where I managed to enter the
world—the house isn't there any more, and that's another thing I
managed."

Julie said: "You'd make a good guide, Mr. Boswell. Too bad there aren't
any Cook's tours to places like this."

"Aye, it IS too bad. Some of the London folks ought to come here once in a
lifetime. They'd learn more than they would on the French Riviera—and
about their own country at that... And don't you go on calling me Mr.
Boswell. Nobody here does."

Presently Charles remarked: "And you've never had a raid?"

"So far, not a solitary bomb. They say you shouldn't even whisper such a
thing—but I'm not superstitious. All I sometimes wish is that I could
clear everybody out of the town and organize my own raid. There's still a few
thousand folks living in houses that oughtn't to exist, and it'll take me ten
years to finish 'em off—the houses, I mean—even when peace
comes."

George was silent again, and for a rather odd reason: at the very
utterance of the phrase 'when peace comes' he had been swept by a sudden
illusion that peace HAD come, and that Browdley under the moonlit sky was the
most peaceful spot, just then, on earth.

"Now you'll have to let ME make YOU some coffee," he said, as they turned
the corner from Shawgate into Market Street. "Because here we are— this
is the old Guardian office—my printing works—this is where I
live. You've seen most of the sights already—it's only a small
town."

"And an honest one too," Charles commented, as George opened the front
door by merely turning the handle. "You live alone?"

"There's Annie comes in every day to clean up a bit. She's an old woman
now, but she'll be glad to see you because—" He was on the point of
saying "because she knows who you are", but he changed it at the last moment
to "because she's got three nephews in the R.A.F." Which was true.

While George was ushering them inside, somebody passed along the pavement
and called out the usual welcome. "'Ow do, George. Back again?"

"How do, John. Aye, I'm back."

It was the fourth or fifth exchange of similar greetings on their way from
the station. Charles laughed and commented that George certainly seemed to be
well known. George laughed also and said Aye, he wasn't exactly a stranger in
those parts. The triteness of the remarks masked the tension they both felt
as they entered the little house. George led the way along the hall and into
his study, where he switched on a light after verifying that the curtains
were drawn. Usually, on bringing anyone there for the first time, he watched
for some sign of amazement at the shelves of books, but now he actually
forgot to do so and was recalled from far different thoughts when Charles
exclaimed: "Quite a library."

George then made his familiar boast that it was the best private
collection in Browdley. But he added: "Not that I'd say the competition's
been very keen." And then he heard himself launching into what now seemed
just a ruefully amusing anecdote. "You know what your mother did once while I
was away? Took off a lot of the paper covers and burned 'em... Thought she
was making the place tidy for me... My, I lost my temper—and that's a
thing I don't often do... Well, how about some coffee? Come in the kitchen
—it's easier..."

* * * * *

They sat with the bare scrubbed table between them and had
tea, after all,
not coffee, because at the last moment George had felt shy of his
coffee-making prowess compared with Charles's, and asked if tea wouldn't do
as well. Charles and Julie said it would, so George made his own favourite
brew, which he could not imagine anyone disliking, though for the connoisseur
it would have been nauseatingly strong. He then put plenty of milk and sugar
into his own large cup, stirred it round, and was reminded of innumerable
times when, as a boy, he had carried a can of the same mixture to his father
at Channing's Mill on cold winter mornings and had sneaked a sip or two on
the way.

George talked about the war and the post-war world; the news in the papers
was very encouraging, and he found it hard as ever not to be optimistic,
though after a lifetime of experience he could keep his optimism under wry
control. He still had ambitions, dreams, plans, and hopes; and if a small
portion of them ever came to anything, well, that was as much as a reasonable
man could expect, but it was also as little as a patient man would accept.
"It's no good your people asking for the moon," a testy political opponent
had said at the last Council meeting; to which he had replied: "Nay, Tom
—it's the SUN they're asking for—the MOON'S what I've promised
'em when the war's over. And if you fellers have any sense ye'll settle for
that as a fair compromise."

So now, by an easy transition, his talk with Charles led back to Browdley
again—its industries, homes, people, and future. "You'll know what I
mean tomorrow when you look over the place. The war seems to have solved our
chief local problems—bad trade and unemployment—though it's only
a fake solution, we'll have our troubles again later. But for the time being
we're better off, in some ways, than we used to be—everybody's got
money, the Council has a budget surplus, and as for jobs—why, we're
even short of men to fill 'em."

"I suppose there's a good deal of female employment then?"

George began to laugh. "You mean, DO THE WOMEN WORK? Of course they do...
And I'm laughing same as when I read in some of those shiny-paper fashion
magazines what a marvellous thing's happening in England because of the war
—the women are actually not idling any more! But the women of Browdley
never HAVE idled. They've worked in their homes and in factories and in both
together ever since the town began. Even when the men had nothing to do, the
women had plenty. So don't you go praising 'em in your speeches for the
novelty of getting their hands soiled!"

"You're still dreaming, George. I shan't make any speeches."

"Aye, I forgot... I was just the same when I was your age—I could
talk, but I couldn't make a speech. And even when I could I hated it at
first... But you're not such a fool as to do anything you hate."

"Who's speaking now, George—the lion, the dog, or the dove?"

The remark put them in a mood in which Julie told them to go back to the
study and talk while she washed up in the kitchen; she insisted on this with
such emphasis that George wondered if she were deliberately contriving a
chance for him to talk to Charles alone. He was not sorry to have that
chance, anyway. The boy entered the study first and was drawing the curtains
aside before George could press the switch. The sudden flood of moonlight
criss- crossed the rows of books; it lay on his desk, on the litter of papers
and Council reports; full of gleams and shadows, it caught the glass in front
of photographs on the mantelpiece.

"Just wondered what sort of view you had, George."

"Not much, I'm afraid. That's the wall of the bus garage."

"But the GARDEN... Come over here!"

George crossed the room, and as he approached the window, which was partly
open, the scent of summer flowers came to him as he never remembered it
before—geraniums, roses, carnations, stocks, mignonette.

"Aye, it's nice this time of the year. I'm not much of a gardener myself,
but Annie likes it and does a bit now and again... Livia's garden, we still
call it—used to be a piece of waste ground till she took it in
hand."

At the word, uttered like a spell between them, Charles stirred uneasily.
"Livia," he muttered. "My father used to call her Livy... The lost books of
Livy, he used to say, what wouldn't I give to look into them!" He breathed
deeply into the scented air. "So she planted the garden and burned your
book-covers? Anything else?"

George did not speak.

Charles went on: "My father used to say she made you into a nerve of her
own body and let you do the aching instead of her... unless you were ill or a
child, and then she took all the aches to herself and rocked you to sleep."
He sat on the arm of a chair, fidgeting nervously with his cigarette-case.
"But that wouldn't suit me. I'm not a child, and I don't expect always to be
ill."

"You won't be. You'll get better."

"I want to work too."

"You will."

"Mind if I smoke?"

"Watch the light if you're not going to pull the curtains."

"Good old warden. The moon's so bright you could turn on all the street
lamps." He suddenly pointed to a photograph on the mantelpiece. "THAT
her?"

"Aye."

"And the baby?"

"He died."

"She was young then."

"Aye. Nearly a quarter of a century ago."

"You make it sound a long time."

"It has been a long time."

"I feel so damned sorry for her, George. My uncle never liked her. Nobody
seems to like her much, for that matter—not how she is now. And the
chances are my father won't come back. She thinks he will, but to me it
doesn't seem probable."

George exclaimed: "By God, though, if she thinks he will, he may. In fact
he'd almost better!"

Charles stared for a moment, then slowly smiled. "Yes, I know. She gets
her own way as a rule. That's why, when she learns about Julie and
me—"

"You haven't told her yet?"

"Not yet. Do you think I should?"

George thought a moment, then said: "Aye, might as well get it over."

"I will then. I'll wire her tomorrow. Your advice has been pretty good so
far."

"You mean you're happy?"

Charles nodded profoundly.

"That's good. I can see Julie is too. And don't feel you ought to be
looking after your mother. It's she who feels she ought to be looking after
you... but you're against that, and so am I."

"I know. And she doesn't really need me, she only needs me to need
her."

"That's not a bad way of putting it."

"Because she's got a sort of secret strength to face things—and less
fear than anyone I ever met—man or woman. I often used to think when I
was sweating it out over Berlin—God, I wish I had guts of iron like
hers... It was crazy, sometimes, the things she'd do. We were at a restaurant
in Munich once and a crowd of army officers sat down at the next table. They
were pretty drunk and high-tempered, started abusing a waiter for something
or other. Eventually one of them struck the man, and my mother, who was
closer than I was, leaned over and bopped the officer over the head with a
Chianti bottle. Suddenly—quietly—without a word— just like
that." Charles swung his arm. "Pure slapstick comedy but for the time and
place."

"What happened?"

"Blood and Chianti all over everything. A riot. Amidst which I managed to
get her out by a back door. The restaurant owner was as keen to save his
premises as I was to avoid an international incident."

George laughed. "It wasn't always so serious. Once she and I were arguing
at dinner about something or other quite trivial when she picked up a piece
of apple-pie and threw it at me. And it happened that you could see in from
the street and somebody HAD seen in—and also it was the middle of an
election campaign. They called me 'Apple-Pie George' after that for a time."
George laughed louder at the recollection. "I used to think it harmed my
chances—maybe it did. But I'm glad to know about all this. I'd forgive
her a lot for that."

"Didn't you forgive her anyway?"

"Aye, I always found it pretty easy."

"My father used to say it was easy to forgive her if she was wrong, but if
she turned out to be right then you might as well never forgive
yourself."

George said after a long pause: "I don't want to send you away, but if
you're feeling sleepy... I've booked a room for you both at the
Greyhound."

"The Greyhound?"

"Just along the street. More comfortable than here."

Charles crossed the room and George put his arm round the boy's shoulder
as the two walked back to the kitchen. "Don't you worry, lad. If I can help
her I shall. It won't all be your job. You can count on me for that."

"Seems to me I count on you for a lot of things, George."

* * * * *

George took them over to the Greyhound, said good-night,
and began the
short stroll back to his house. But he felt so wakeful he made a detour past
the Town Hall, his mind being still full of thoughts, strange thoughts, such
as that Charles had actually been under his roof, and that Browdley in
moonlight was really a beautiful place. Not only the Town Hall, but the main
office of the Browdley Building Society, Joe Hardman's fish-shop, even
Ridgeway's garage on whose doors, as a halcyon reminder, there could still be
seen the painting of a very gay peace-time charabanc for hire... all so
beautiful... which was absurd, of course; yet even as he admitted it, beauty
and a little sadness remained in what he felt. He could not hope for sleep in
such a mood; but he could work, there was always that. As he entered his
house the hall was bright as bars of silver; he could even read the headline
of the Advertiser, and a typical one, even after five years of war—
"Shall Browdley Have Sunday Cinemas?" So THAT was how his old journalistic
rival still looked at the world, he mused, with extra irony because the
Sunday cinema question had been debated in Browdley ever since he had
campaigned as a young man for his first Council election... and now they were
at it again!... No wonder Lord Winslow could remark that England didn't
change! But it did change, for all that, beneath the surface of dead issues
regularly flogged to life. George slipped the paper into his pocket as he
walked into the open study doorway.

Suddenly he knew he was not alone. Someone was standing in front of the
window, staring out—as Charles had done earlier—into the garden.
The figure turned, offered a profile against the moonlight, was
unmistakable...

"LIVIA!"

At the instant of recognition he felt his hands clench with shock for
which he must brace mind and heart as well; and he did so, almost as
instantly.

"Where is he? He's been here, George. I know that. I want to see him."

He answered in a level voice: "They're not here now, Livia."

"THEY? Who're THEY?"

He answered because it was the way he himself thought of them: "Charles
and Julie."

He caught his breath, having spoken the phrase; he would have expected a
scene, but for knowing that with Livia one could never expect the expected.
All she did was to cross the room and sit on the arm of his armchair, while
he drew the curtains and switched on the light. He saw then that she looked
tired and rather pale, but not uncomposed. Because he wanted to give her time
to grasp the situation, he did not speak, but went back to the curtains and
pretended to be fixing them with especial care.

"Julie," she said at last, still quietly. "So that's her name. Charlie and
Julie. How sweet! Where are they?"

"Why did you come here, Livia?" he countered. "What made you think it
would help?"

"I don't want it to help. I mean to stop this nonsense. And I know they
ARE here, now you've told me she's with him, because I went to Cambridge
first and talked to his servant at the College... I know, it's no use you
denying it. Of course I know. And I know your part in it all. I ALWAYS
know."

"Aye, there's not much misses you—or ever did. But there's something
extra to tell you this time." He added, in a kindly voice, with no note of
triumph in it: "I told you, Livia, my advice would be to let the boy live his
own life. That's what he's going to do, and I'll admit I'm all for it. So
whatever you've come to stop you're too late."

"I'M too late?" She stared at him with glazed eyes. "Oh no, no. You're the
one who's late. You have been all along. And he's where you put him because
of that. You and your kind of people. You talk about letting him live his own
life—why DIDN'T you, then, when he had one to live—not just half
a one? That's all he has now because of the mess you've made of everything.
You said my father's victims were all over the town—but yours are all
over the world—people like you who went on making speeches...
speeches... you were making them before he was born—just as you still
are—"

"Livia, you surely haven't come here just for an argument—"

"I told you what I came here for. I want Charlie. I WANT him. What's left
of him, that is, after your kind have said all their prayers and made all
their speeches—"

"I don't know what you're driving at, Livia. If you mean that my
generation's largely responsible for the war, then I'll agree with you.
Charles and I once discussed the same point—"

"Oh, you did, did you? Just a nice friendly discussion. And he forgave
you, I suppose. Man to man and all that. With his shattered nerves and
smashed legs and burned eyes he forgave you—because he too may need to
be forgiven some day."

"Aye, if he just sits back and lets things happen. I told him that. There
was a children's ward next to where he was in the hospital, and I asked if he
wasn't afraid that those kids when they grew up—or his own kids for
that matter—"

Her eyes sharpened.

"HIS? He'll never have any. Maybe he can't. It's like that sometimes. I
hope so, because that would be the best way to end it. My father, me, him,
full-stop..."

"Livia, that's a terrible thing to say."

"More terrible to mean."

"I hope you'll never let him know you do mean it."

"I shan't have to. It'll come to him when we're in Ireland."

"Ireland? I doubt he'll want to go there now so much."

"He doesn't know what he wants. He thinks he wants this girl, but that's
absurd. I can make him want what he really wants."

"Livia... remember I said you were too late." George paused, then added:
"They're married."

"WHAT?"

"Three days ago in London. He was going to wire you about it tomorrow.
Perhaps he ought to have done so before, but you can hardly blame him..."

George then saw something which, despite all Millbay had said, he had
tried to believe did not exist. It was a look of implacability so vivid, so
pure in a sense, that he recoiled from it less in revulsion than in elemental
awareness of what it signified. For he was all against it, as a stream of
yielding water is against the rock it will wear down in a million years or
so. And suddenly, without bitterness, he saw Livia as a symbol of all that
must so be worn down, no matter how hard or long the struggle, no matter how
often the victories of greed and despair and intolerance seem to make
nonsense of it.

With his own gentler implacability he stared at hers till the
transfiguration disappeared.

She said at length: "So... you think... you've done the trick?"

"It's no trick, Livia."

"Last-minute victory, then? Narrow majority? And a hearty vote of thanks
to Mister Mayor...?" But she was her masked self again, so that the stress on
the prefix was only ironic. She went on: "Perhaps you still don't know what
I'm driving at? You never did—and you're afraid Charlie might if he got
the chance. You're afraid he might see things my way. So's Howard. He wants
him to have lands and a title and riches—"

"Aye, I know, and I agree with you there. They'd be just a burden to him,
and that's why—"

"That's why you'd rather give him YOUR kind of burden. Speeches—
promises—the same old never-again stuff. But you shan't, George
—I can stop that, even now. And as for the little schemer he's been
duped by, does she think HER influence is going to count?"

"Nay, Livia, not hers. Nor mine, nor his uncle's, nor yours. Let him get
on his feet, build up his own ideas, see things with his own eyes when he has
the strength to see clearly—that's all I'm aiming for. He'll influence
me as much as I will him—I'm not so sure of my own opinions that I'd
try to ram them down somebody's throat. I'll take his—if he can
convince me. Or we can keep our own. It doesn't matter. I know you look at
things differently—"

"So does the man from Mars, maybe."

That stumped him; he blinked bewilderedly till she continued: "If he could
see the world today he'd think it was in charge of raving lunatics and the
asylums were for sane people who'd gone there for safety. So if anybody
thinks I'm a little out of my mind—Howard does, I know—"

"Livia, I don't. But I do think—for the time being—
you're not able to help the boy as he most needs helping... Later,
perhaps..."

"Too late—and already you talk of LATER..." She suddenly got up and
began walking towards the door. "I can see this is wasting more time. I'd
better start on my way back. The five-ten, isn't it? I remember. Can I have a
cup of tea first?"

"Why... of course. I'm only sorry you..." But then he stopped; he didn't
know what he was only sorry about, except that she had come.

She said, from the hall as she crossed it to the kitchen: "No pressing
invitation to stay a few days, then?"

"Nay, Livia, and you know why. I'm anxious that Charlie shouldn't have any
shocks." He had called the boy Charlie because she had and it seemed almost
something shared and sharable at last between them, something that warmed his
voice as he added: "Give him a chance, Livia. Leave him alone a bit. God
knows that's a hard thing to say, but I mean it."

She said after a pause: "Do you hate me, George?"

He shook his head. "I never did and I never could. I'm not much use at
hating folks, to be frank. But I can fight 'em when I have to... and I'd have
to now, if you made me."

"And you think you'd win?"

"I'm not so sure, but I'm not sure I'd lose, either. That's why I say give
him a chance. Give us all a chance this time."

In the kitchen she prepared tea herself, not letting him do so, as if she
were certain nothing had been changed (and practically nothing had). She
began to cry a little while she moved about. George watched her unhappily,
puzzled not so much by her behaviour as by his own, for he found himself less
moved by her tears than by her simple act of tightening a tap that had been
leaking into the sink for days. Nobody could do things so deftly, quickly,
tidily, incontrovertibly. She had probably got her own way with Japs pretty
much as she did with taps, George reflected whimsically; and then again he
was touched by her next remark, clairvoyant in that old familiar blinding way
of hers: "You think I'm acting, don't you, George? And you think that means
I'm not sincere?... You don't understand that sometimes I mean things so much
I HAVE to act?... You don't understand that, because you NEVER mean things so
much... Oh, George, you don't know how terrible it is to be alive in this
world!"

"Perhaps I do, Livia, perhaps I don't feel it the way you do, but I know
it, and I also know this—there's not only terror—there's hope
—and love—"

"But they're the most terrible of all—"

"Nay, nay, not how I see things."

"But do you see ANYTHING? Anything to match love and hate? I love my son
and I hate that girl—I'd kill her if I got the chance..."

"You would?"

"That shocks you, doesn't it?"

"Nay... it doesn't exactly do that. But it makes me think."

"And you think it's awful... yet all the other killing that's going on
—killing without hate—oh, THAT you can take for granted. Duty.
Honour. Jeffrey did too—and with better brains than yours... What do
you SEE, George? In the future, I mean? What chance is there? This humanity
you do everything for—what do you see in it?"

George saw the greyness round the edges of the curtains; he looked at his
watch, then crossed to the window and let in the summer dawn. Already it was
staring the moon out of the sky. It seemed to him that the world, like Livia,
was snarled with memories and desires, beauty and blackness and lies and
truth and hope and despair; you might as well leave it alone unless you had a
driving love for the thankless job of tackling it. But if you had that love,
then you could go ahead. George saw the roofs across the street as they took
form and substance, and knew that the love in his own heart was more than he
could speak or even make a speech about—and least of all to Livia; but
the thought of it, and the continual vision of it, had governed all he had
ever done that seemed either weak or strong.

"Aye," he said as he turned back to her. "I've often wondered that myself,
but it doesn't make any difference." He came over and touched her shoulder
with a kindliness induced by his own thoughts rather than by any more
personal emotion. "Drink up, Livia—we'll have to hurry if you want to
catch the five-ten. And no more arguments, because we'll not change each
other, I reckon, from now till doomsday..."